Back from the Dead...

...well, sortof    :)

I'll spare you all the ultra boring details of what's been going on, it's probably too much for me to remember it all anyway and I'd rather not revisit it all anyway.  For the sake of time and my sanity I'll just say, "ugh!"

Moving on, while I've been away from the blog for a while, I haven't necessarily been away from my work and I'll try to get back into the groove of writing things down here as I go along.  

One new thing that has happened and will directly effect the content here is my moving to Maryland this fall/winter.  We'll be moving within the next few months so I'll have an all new state to explore and I'll be close enough to my old stomping grounds in Washington, D.C. to be able to get back to all the treasure troves of information there.  I'll have to be sure to document it all here when the time comes.  I've never done anything in Maryland but I did track one of my husband's lines to a family of Quakers in Maryland so potentially I could have at least two new things to talk about in those topics.  

Hmmm, I might actually want to start working getting a Maryland research guide for myself together...or one of Maryland Quakers...or Quakers in general...or all of the above!  Oh goodness, I have a lot to do, why am I still writing this!  :)  Stay tuned!

Writing Research Plans - the Dellibac Example (part one)

Ok, so most of you know that I've been working on trying to isolate where my French-Canadian immigrant ancestor, Moise Dellibac, came from and hopefully be able to identify his parents in the process (or vice versa). The previous post with my Dellibac brainstorming can be found here . This is my first attempt at working with French-Canadian ancestors so much of the work is new. But anyone who has done any ethnic research knows that the very first step in working with immigrant ancestors is to start with any records they left in the US. You can't just jump ahead to their home country and hope to get lucky. So since Moise settled in and died in Kankakee County, Illinois that's where I've started.

To help myself, and maybe even others who need help staying on track and developing and following a plan, I've decided to start researching the Dellibacs by the book. That is, following the formal practices I learned in courses like ProGen and intensive tracks at the Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. The first step in this process was to conduct a record survey of what is available in my target areas. Since I'm starting with Illinois records first, I focused on the counties of Kankakee, where Moise died, and Iroquois, where he is first found in US census enumerations. My results can be found here and here.

The next step in the process is to start the research plan, taking into account all of the resources uncovered in the record survey. The plan MUST begin with a clear definition of the research problem or objective. In this case, my objective is to find Moise Dellibac's father/parents. I've determined that my primary objective is to find his parents. With that information, I can presumably figure out the area they were from.

Once you have your objective clearly defined, you can start building your plan of attack. For help in this area, I am especially grateful for chapter 14 of ProGen by Elizabeth Shown Mills, "Problem Analyses and Research Plans" written by Helen Leary, CG, CGL, FASG. On page 269, Helen describes the process of writing a research plan as being developed in three stages : analysis, refinement, and logistics. Once you've gone through all three stages, you'll have a final plan which will include lists of all the records that are searched at every repository you go to, every piece of information you're looking for at each of those repositories, and any additional information or anomalies involved in one or all of those record searches (ie. is the county you're working on a burned county and if so, how will you get around that problem). Also, if you need to report your findings in a particular format you would put that in your plan as well.

Finally, if you are crafting your plan for a client you're going to have time constraints and you need to make that known in your plan as well. This will greatly effect your plan because you may not be contracted for enough time to allow you to access and view all of the records and resources you uncovered in your record survey. Instead, you'll have to conduct an analysis of your survey and pull out which records you think will be most helpful; meaning, which resources would be most likely to produce the desired results to allow you to solve the research problem you stated at the beginning of your plan. If all goes well, these records will win the game for you. If not though, you'll have to go back to your record survey and devise a new plan, then request additional time from your client.

...on to part 2...

Finished the first research report for my Delibac project

I've finally put together my research report for my Delibac family project. The objective is for me to find out where exactly in Quebec Moise Delibac came from and if I can, try to find out who his parents were. The family assertion is that he is a son of Alexis Delibac and Felicite Gaudreau but up to this point, we had no concrete evidence for this. Here is my initial post on the problem/s I am hoping to work out.

I'm not a computer person so I did my research report on paper, and need to type it up and get it on the site. But I was thinking that maybe instead of typing up my research report, instead I would try to work up something like a tips and a template post, where I would give some tips and instructions from what I've learned in the past, and then post examples from my own report to show how I incorporated those tips. That might be more help to people than seeing a report for my own personal project. So I'm going to try and tweak my report this weekend and get my alternate idea up here soon. Keep your eyes open!

Don't be a surname searcher, be a thorough researcher!

Here's the situation: You're going through probate packets and come across two receipts signed by someone named Delinda Christian

Receipt One



Receipt Two





Now, setting aside an assessment of the varying handwriting styles, if it had already been established that the decedent left behind a widow named Delinda Christian and you see this name appearing on receipts you might be willing to say that they're all receipts for the same person, especially if all you're looking at are the names on the pages. That name isn't very common, it must be receipts for amounts due to the widow by the estate, right? Here's the valuable info you would miss out on by being merely a name scanner


Receipt One

Receipt Two


You have now learned that the decedent, John Christian, had two Delinda Christians in his life; his wife and his daughter. This is also pre-1850 information which means if you were to go to the 1840 census looking for John, all you would find for his household are tick marks so you would have no idea what the names of his family members would have been. Not only is this a great example of the importance of probate papers in reconstructing families, but it's also a great reason to go beyond being just a name scanner. The first step is actually reading the information and understanding it in context. Then you also need to understand why the document was created and what else might be available to you that would help you to build your case. For these other two points, the how and why of the sources you're using and how to become aware of all of your sources, a couple of excellent articles have recently been posted online so check them out for more information on how to make the most of the information you're given in those sources. Don't be one of those people who just pick up books and turn immediately to the index, look up a name and then close the book and move on to something else. Dig deeper!

Footnote on my Footnotes

Search for Sources, Not Just Surnames

Thanks to Michael Hait for pointing out these excellent blog posts!

Research Challenge!

While I was in Salt Lake City, I had a few minutes here and there to do a little searching around in the book collection. I found something that struck me as a possible lead so I took a quick photo of the page with my iphone so I could come back to it and do a little background searching once I got home.

The book was an index to baptismal records from St John's Church in Portsmouth, NH from 1795-1884. The entry was for the baptism of 5 year old Charles Henry Thomas Stevens Hudgen in 1833. His parents are listed as Lewis Hudgen and Hannah Stevens. Hannah's parents were sponsors and were named Charles and Lydia Stevens.

The reason I was interested in this listing is because my oldest known immigrant ancestor is Charles Thomas Stevens of England, and later, of Portsmouth, NH. His wife was Lydia Jacobs. He is believed to have been born around 1754 and his emigration to America is currently unknown but it was before the 1790s, when he appears to have been married and settled in New Hampshire. He died in the 1840s at nearly 90 years of age and is buried in the crypts at the Old North Church in Boston. Charles and Lydia had several children, but up to this point only 2 have been identified by name; Charles T., born about 1815, and Mary T. Stevens Lovejoy, born about 1807. So the belief is that this Hannah Stevens Hudgen could be one of the previously unknown children of the immigrant Charles and that means another lead to finding out more about him. He is one of my brick wall ancestors in that I know next to nothing about his early life.

So, obviously I wanted to find out more about this Lewis and Hannah Hudgen of Boston. First place I turn to is the 1850 census. No luck there. Then I figured that if little Charles Henry was 5 years old in 1833, he would have been born about 1828 meaning the family should have been together in 1830. So I go to the 1830 census. No luck there either. Nor for the 1840 or 1870 census. I start searching for Charles across all census years in Boston and in all of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, no luck. Hannah, no luck. Lewis, no luck. Then I go to the Massachusetts Archives vital records search looking for either Lewis or Hannah's deaths (the search begins in 1841, too late to look for their marriage or for Charles' birth), no luck there either.

So where in the world is the Lewis Hudgen family that would have been at least a group of 3 at the time of the 1830 census, and who were living in Boston at the time of their son's baptism in New Hampshire in 1833?

Dellibac Record Survey, part 2 - Kankakee Co., IL

After doing this for Iroquois County already, I had high hopes for what was out there on Kankakee County. Unfortunately, I didn't make much headway here. There just didn't seem to be as much that was readily available for Kankakee County, which was a bit surprising. In any case, here is what I found-

-county records begin in 1853
-birth records begin in 1877 (the Kankakee Valley Genealogical Society website says 1878) and there is an index to the birth records on the KVGS website
-marriage records begin in 1853 with the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index available on the IRAD website
-death records begin in 1877 with an index on the KVGS website
-all of the above are available from the Kankakee County Clerk's Office
-land records begin in 1851 (2 years before the official formation of the county in 1853) and are available from the recorder of deeds
-probate records begin in 1853 and are available from the Circuit Court Clerk and are also online (without an index) at familysearch.org
-the Kankakee County Clerk has naturalization records
-the Kankakee Public Library has some newspapers stretching back to the 1850s on microfilm, but none are French language
-they do have a collection of "newspaper clippings about some of the French Canadian people who settles the Kankakee Area"

-a search of Chronicling America did turn up a couple of French language newspapers in the area, but none are locally held. The nearest partial holding library is the state library in Springfield.

Important Interruption from the Dellibac Debacle...

Ok, I wasn't planning on interrupting the Dellibac research series but I just can't hold this one in, especially after just leaving SLIG's Advanced Methodology class.

So let's say that you are doing a little online searching and come across an abstract of a record that appears to be for your ancestor. It is an abstract, so it contains the name of the subject and also his wife. The year is also given, along with the book and page number of the original record. What do you do now? Jot down the name of the wife, enter it into your database and call it done? How about adding the year and place where the record is found so that you can place your subject in that time and place? That's getting all the information out of that source, right?

Can we say, BIG WRONG? If you are lucky enough to find some online information like this, the first rule of the genealogy club is (don't talk about genealogy club, no that's not it) GET THE ORIGINAL! This is an abstraction. That doesn't mean they've pulled everything that may be important to you out of that document and served it up on a platter for you. Their requirements for information that was important enough to include are probably not the same as yours and the only way to truly know what is included is to see the document. Also, being able to actually have it (or an official record copy) in your hand so you know it exists without having to believe some nameless, faceless website is a big plus too. There is no way for you to reliably weigh your evidence unless you know exactly where that document and the information that it contains came from and you have no way of knowing that if you just stop the process at a website. And the biggest problem that can arise from this is that the guy with the same name in the online listing may not even be the right guy. The only way you'll know, is to check the original.

You're really are short-changing yourself by taking the quick and easy way here. You may be excited about seeing that name on an online database but don't let that cloud your brain. Get the document. Check your facts. And for goodness sakes, cite the source where it came from.

[venting off]