FamilySearch Digitizing Records from Trumbull County, Ohio

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Recently, FamilySearch.org has been uploading digitized images of a wide variety of records from Trumbull County, Ohio. The records range from 1795-2010. As of today (02 Feb 2015), the collection includes 666,927 browsable images. If you are interested, you will find the collection here: https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2065327.

Having this available for online research will be very valuable for genealogists and family historians because Trumbull County once encompassed the entire area of the Connecticut Western Reserve (aka Northeastern Ohio) before it was divided into smaller counties. Many of the early deeds to land in the Western Reserve were recorded in Trumbull County.

FamilySearch indicates that this is a work in progress with the following statement:

Various records from the courthouse in Warren, Ohio. This collection is being published as images become available.

Because I have ancestors and collateral relatives from Trumbull County, I decided to take a look at what is available so far. I found records under these record categories.

Cemetery records
Common Pleas records
Court records
Land and property records
Naturalization records
Probate records
Tax records
Vital records

To see what the images look like in this collection, I delved into Cemetery Records and learned that one of the components is “Grave registrations (veterans) vol 1 1809-1997.”  At this time, there is no index. I opened this set of records and found very clear digital images of journal pages consisting of typed entries of veterans who died in the 19th and 20th centuries. The entries obviously were entered as information was collected cemetery by cemetery. The entries are arranged alphabetically, so it is much like browsing through the actual journal pages. I found two Betts ancestors who were buried in Kinsman Cemetery in Kinsman Township, and learned the exact locations of their graves in the cemetery.

I also looked in the Vital Records section and found the image of the marriage of my great uncle Walter Chase Dingman to Mina Mae Woolley. It was Uncle Walter’s first marriage — at age 65! Mina was a widow and she listed her age as 61. I remember attending their wedding, which was held in her home in Kinsman, Ohio. Here is a image file of the record of their marriage (if you click on it, it will open in a larger size and you will be able to see that it is high quality):

Marriage--Dingman, Walter C and Mina Woolley

Here is how FamilySearch recommends that we cite records from this collection:

“Ohio, Trumbull County Records, 1795-2010.” Images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : accessed 2015. Trumbull County Courthouse, Warren.

 

Researching in City Directories on Ancestry.com

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City directories are valuable resources for learning about ancestors–and collateral relatives–in the late 19th and 20th centuries. When I started out in genealogy almost 20 years ago, I had to visit archives and libraries that held printed copies of city directories in their collections to do this type of research. One repository, the Cuyahoga County Archives, had an extensive set of Cleveland (Ohio) City Directories, but they, of course, were printed on inexpensive paper, and they were disintegrating at a rapid rate. Many pages crumbled into paper fragments that ended up on the floor.

Fortunately, a great number of city directories were microfilmed during the heyday of microfilm technology in the middle decades of the 20th century, so they were preserved in a usable form. In recent years, those microfilms have been digitized, and thus city directories resources became more user friendly.

Today, you can do research in these digitized city directories online using various database providers. My favorite is Ancestry.com. You can learn about researching in City Directories on Ancestry by viewing a 17-min video if you go here: City Directories and How to Use for Family History.

Recently, as a test case for searching in the All U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 collection, I entered Wallace Dingman in the search window that comes up for the collection. I could have entered more detail, but for this test, I kept it simple.

The search came up with 28 results for Wallace Dingman residing in various localities on various dates ranging from 1886 in Battle Creek, Michigan, to 1928 in San Francisco, to 1941 in Buffalo, New York. Bingo on that last location! It was for my uncle, Wallace B Dingman, living in Buffalo in 1941 with spouse Betty E Dingman. The entry informs us that the family was living at 78 MIdway ave, and that Uncle “Ding” was working as a supervisor at Curtis Wright Corp. Interestingly, there were 11 other Dingman listings in this particular Buffalo directory, but to my knowledge, no others were close relatives.

I clicked on the side panel offering details about the collection and learned that the directories contained in this database can be browsed. This would be useful if you believe that someone who should have been included, but was not, perhaps because the OCR (optical character recognition) process used in creating the collection misread the name of your ancestor. The individual publications are arranged alphabetically, so browsing is easy to do once you call up the appropriate directory using the browsing search window below:

U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989

This database is a collection of city directories for various years and cities in the U.S. Generally a city directory will contain an alphabetical list of its citizens, listing the names of the…

Learn more about this database

Browse Individual Records

To browse this image set, select from the options below.

State

City or County

Year

Title

Give city directory research a try. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you find.

Eastman Online Genealogy News (EOGN) Is 19

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This is a somewhat belated birthday congratulations to Dick Eastman on the 19th birthday of his e-newsletter: Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter (EOGN), which is available at http://blog.eogn.com/.

Here is a quote from Dick’s first newsletter published on January 15, 1996:

Well, it’s started. This newsletter is something that I have been considering for a long time, but I finally decided to “take the plunge.” I’ve subscribed to several other electronic newsletters for some time now and have found them to be valuable. On many occasions I have said to myself, “Someone ought to do a weekly newsletter for genealogy news.” One day the light bulb went on, and I decided that perhaps I was that someone.

I hope to collect various bits of information that cross my desk and appear on my screen every week. Some of these items may be considered “news items” concerning events and happenings of interest to computer-owning genealogists. Some other items will be mini press releases about new genealogy software or other products and services that have just become available. I may write a few articles about things that are not genealogy-related but still seem to be of interest to me and probably to the readers. This may include articles about online systems, operating systems or other things that affect many of us.

You will also find editorials and my personal opinions weaving in and out of this newsletter. Hopefully I will be able to clearly identify the information that is a personal opinion.

The expected audience of this newsletter includes anyone in the genealogy business, any genealogy society officers and anyone with an interest in applying computers to help in the research of one’s ancestors.

I chose to distribute in electronic format for two reasons: (1.) it’s easy, and (2.) it’s cheap. In years past I have been an editor of other newsletters that were printed on paper and mailed in the normal manner. The “overhead” associated with that effort was excessive; I spent more time dealing with printers, maintaining addresses of subscribers, handling finances, stuffing envelopes and running to the post office than I did in the actual writing. Today’s technology allows for a much faster distribution, and it is done at almost no expense to either the producer or the subscribers. I want to spend my time writing, not running a “newsletter business.”

Dick states that he has followed the original plan “rather closely” during its publication run.

There is one big difference. With the expansion in interest in genealogy and family history, Dick found it necessary to convert the frequency of EOGN from weekly to daily more than ten years ago. He still sends weekly “collections” of all the articles by e-mail to all Plus Edition subscribers as well as shorter, daily e-mails to Standard Edition subscribers.

Dick also includes the following comments about how EOGN is put together and distributed:

I was amused a while ago when someone sent a message to me that started with the words, “I hope someone on your staff will forward this message to you.” After eighteen years, my staff remains almost the same as when I started: myself plus one very talented lady who edits this newsletter every week. I do the up-front work; she then converts my written words into real English. She also functions as a business adviser, confidante, and good friend. She has done this for nearly every newsletter since the very first edition.

Pam has edited nearly every newsletter article despite the travel schedules of both of us; sometimes we both have been in hotel rooms but in different countries. I well remember one week several years ago when I was writing newsletter articles from a hotel room in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Pam was editing the articles from her hotel room in California. (We both lived in Massachusetts at the time.)

As a computer professional, her travel schedule used to be at least as hectic as mine although she travels less these days. She and I have passed the proposed newsletter articles back and forth by e-mail time and again.

Thanks, Pam. I couldn’t do it without you.

In addition to Pam’s magnificent editing efforts, I was also fortunate when Bobbi King (her Association of Professional Genealogists page is at https://www.apgen.org/directory/search_detail.html?mbr_id=1476) joined the newsletter staff almost two years ago. Bobbi writes most of the book reviews published in the newsletter and she, too, has contributed much to the success of this publication.

If you are interested in keeping up with developments of all kinds in genealogical and family history research, you should subscribe to EOGN. You can subscribe to the free edition here: http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=948986 simply by providing your email address. You can unsubscribe at any time if you don’t find it useful.  To learn more about the Plus Edition, with its special offerings, go here: http://blog.eogn.com/subscribe-to-the-plus-edition/.

Generational Suffixes: When Junior and II Are–and Were–Used in Families

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Today, I was double checking my “Dingmans of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio” family tree on Ancestry.com (it actually has a URL, which is http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/70859843/family), and I noted that the Junior suffix was used after the name of a son of Jacob (b 1788 in Schodack, Rennselaer, New York). The son, however, was Peter Jr, not Jacob Jr. Jacob did have a brother by the name of Peter, and they both lived in Charleston Town, Montgomery County, New York in the early decades of the 19th century. What was the story here?

I did a quick lookup on Wikipedia for suffixes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffix_(name)> and there appeared a very informative article on all kinds of suffixes, professional and personal. What I was interested in specifically was under the heading of Generational Suffixes. Here is what applies to my family naming question:

Generational suffixes are used to distinguish persons who share the same name within a family. A generational suffix can be used informally (for disambiguation purposes, or as nicknames) and is often incorporated in legal documents.

The most common name suffixes are senior and junior, most frequent in American usage, which are written with a capital first letter (“Jr.” and “Sr.”) with or without an interceding comma. In England, the abbreviations are “Jnr” and “Snr”, respectively. The term “junior” is correctly used only if a child’s first, middle, and last names are identical to his or her parent’s names. When the suffixes are spelled out in full, they are always written with the first letter in lower case.

This confirms what I have understood to be common practice in recent times. Thus, my uncle, Wallace Betts Dingman, was called Junior during his growing up years, as his father (and my maternal grandfather) was also Wallace Betts Dingman. Unfortunately, Wallace Betts Dingman Sr died in 1920, well before I was born, and when his son was only nine years old. He may have used the suffix Sr, although I have not seen any surviving records referring to him that way.

This all still leaves the question of why a son of Jacob Dingman was referred to as Peter Dingman Jr some 100 years earlier in upstate New York. Wikipedia came to the rescue, with an explanation further down on the same web page referred to above:

Alternatively, Jr’s are sometimes referred to as “II”. However, the original name carrier relative of a “II” is generally an uncle, cousin, or ancestor (including grandfather). The suffix “III” is used after either Jr or II and like subsequent numeric suffixes, does not need to be restricted to one family line. For example, if Randall and Patrick Dudley are brothers and if Randall has a son before Patrick, he will call his son Patrick II. If Patrick now has a son, his son is Patrick, Jr.

As time passes, the III suffix goes to the son of either Patrick Jr or Patrick II, whomever is first to have a son named Patrick. This is one way it is possible and correct for a Junior to father a IV. Another example involves President Ulysses S. Grant and his sons Frederick, Ulysses Jr, and Jesse. When Frederick’s son Ulysses was born in 1881, Ulysses Jr did not yet have a son named after himself. Therefore, Frederick’s son was Ulysses III. Ulysses Jr’s son, born afterwards in 1893, was Ulysses IV. Jesse’s son Chapman was the father of Ulysses V, as neither Ulysses III nor Ulysses IV had sons named for themselves.

There you have it. Peter Dingman, son of Jacob Dingman, used the generational suffix Jr to indicate that he was the second Peter in the Dingman family which included his father, Jacob, and an uncle, Peter. It no doubt helped people distinguish which Peter was which in Charleston Town, Montgomery County, New York in the early 1800s.

WRHS Library Open for Martin Luther King Day Monday Jan 19

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For this year’s University Circle celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the WRHS History Center (http://www.wrhs.org/) will offer free admission and hands-on activities for visitors in attendance.

The main purpose, of course, is to celebrate the life of MLK and his achievements. While displays will be mounted throughout the History Center, the Research Library will be focusing on helping people do research into the lives of their ancestors and the history of their family. NOTE: admission is free. Staff and volunteers will be available to assist any and all visitors.

Here’s what is going on elsewhere in the History Center: Documentaries about King’s legacy will be playing on a loop throughout the day in the Community Conference Room. The History Center’s Crawford Gallery will feature protest signs and informational posters and rights organizations such as CORE, NAACP, SNIC, and more. In the Crawford Rotunda, visitors will be prompted with the question: “What is Your Cause?” From their answers, they are invited to create an idea and acronym for their own rights organization supporting the cause that they feel most powerfully about. Visitors can then make a mini protest sign to take with them as a reminder of how Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy of non-violent protest can still effect change today.

If you want to try your hand at family history research, or continue to look into the particulars of your ancestors. this is a great opportunity. I will be there as a volunteer, so maybe we can get together.

Learning How to Find Your Ancestors Migration Routes

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My maternal ancestors came from various points in Colonial America to Western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Many probably used the Erie Canal (opening in 1825) in New York State for part of their travels. Others came by overland routes across Pennsylvania. Needless to say, I am always interested in learning more about migration routes.

Such an opportunity to learn more about migration routes throughout America is coming up next month at Western Reserve Historical Society. Here are the details:

Saturday, February 7, 2015: “Where Did They Go?” Finding Your Family’s Migration Routes

This three-hour class will be held in the Hassler Room of the Western Reserve Historical Society Research Library. It is sponsored by the Genealogical Committee, an auxiliary of the Western Reserve Historical Society.

Not all families settled down and never moved. If your research hits a dead end, get it back on the road by considering migratory patterns. Sunny Morton, OGS editor, author, blogger, researcher and Genealogical Committee member will present a fact-filled class to help you understand and to follow your family’s migration path. A variety of resources and techniques may help you to connect the dots to trails, roads, highways traveled by your ancestors to other states and other cities.

The class will begin at noon and continue to 3 pm. There will be time after the class to do research in the WRHS Library, accessing books and other printed materials, and several online databases. You may bring a laptop or tablet computer and use it in the class. The Library has Wi-Fi.

A fee of $15 pays for a packet of course materials, tips, and other information. Registration is requested in advance. Register online by going to http://www.wrhs.org/upcoming-events/ and clicking on the event you are interested in. Or send an email to foxreinhardt@usa.net and pay your fee at the door. You may also print this email and fill in the form below and send it by postal mail with your check to:

Genealogical Committee

Western Reserve Historical Society

10825 East Boulevard

Cleveland, OH 44106.

“_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _

I wish to attend the following class:
Class
Name _____”Where Did They Go?” ____________________________________________________

Class
Date ­­­­­­_____­­­­­ 7 Feb 2015 ______________________________________________________________

Name ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________________________________________________________

Telephone No. _____________________________________________________________________

This is one of several classes being offered by the Genealogical Committee at WRHS during the first half of 2015. The schedule of classes got off to a fast start last Saturday (January 10) with a class for beginning genealogical and family history researchers. Thirty-one students showed up for that class. Needless to say, the Gen Committee members were very gratified. Most of the students stayed aftewords to do some research in the Library using the new computer workstations and online research databases. Ann Sindelar, reference supervisor for the Library, also conducted tours of the Library to acquaint students with the resources that are available.

I definitely am signing up for the upcoming class on migration. Maybe I’ll see you there!

Genealogy Roadshow Starts Season Two Tonight. Episode Set in New Orleans

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PBS kicks off the second season of Genealogy Roadshow (http://www.pbs.org/genealogy-roadshow/home/) tonight, Tuesday, 13 Jan 2015. In the Greater Cleveland (Ohio) area, it will be aired on Channel WVIZ (http://www.ideastream.org/) at 8 pm. It also will be available at the same broadcast time on Channel WEAO (http://westernreservepublicmedia.org/).

The setting for this episode is the Cabildo, the present-day Louisiana State Museum, but over 200 years ago, a key government facility. In 1803, it was the site of the Louisiana Purchase transfer, the event that acquired the Louisiana Territory for the United States, doubling its land area.

The hour will include: a couple whose ancestors hail from the same small Italian town who explore the chance they may be related; a woman desperate to find out who committed a gruesome murder in her ancestors’ past; a home held by one family for more than a century that renders a fascinating story; and a woman who discovers the difficult journey her ancestor took on the path to freedom from slavery.

Located next to St. Louis Cathedral and facing Jackson Square, the Cabildo was built under Spanish rule in 1795-1799 and named after the municipal governing body that was located there. Before the transfer of the building to the state museum in 1908, the Cabildo served as a city hall, a courthouse and a prison. The building was designed by Gilberto Guillemard, who also designed St. Louis Cathedral and the Presbytere but the third story mansard roof with cupola was not added until 1847, replacing the original flat Spanish roof and balustrade. On the second floor is the Sala Capitular, or “Meeting Room”, in which much of the official business of the building took place.

The Cabildo served as New Orleans City Hall until 1853 when it became the headquarters of the Louisiana State Supreme Court and saw the landmark Slaughterhouse and Plessy vs. Ferguson decisions. When the Marquis de Lafayette visited the Crescent City in 1825, the city allowed him the use of the Sala Capitular as his residence. In the 1870’s, the building came under gunfire on three separate occasions, all the product of Reconstruction era politics and racial tension. The building was transferred over to the Louisiana State Museum in 1908 and has served to educate the public about Louisiana history since. Unfortunately, in 1988 the Cabildo was severely damaged by fire. Over the next five years, the landmark was authentically restored using 600-year-old French timber framing technology. It reopened to the public in 1994 with a comprehensive exhibit focusing on Louisiana’s early history.

 

Ancestry Looks Ahead to 2015

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When I opened Ancestry.com today, I was greeted with this letter from Tim Sullivan, president of the subscription database providers:

To the Ancestry community,

You had an incredible year in 2014, showing more commitment and passion than ever for discovering your family story.

Here at Ancestry, we worked hard this past year to make our service even more useful, rewarding, and fun for you. Last year, we launched more than 2 billion new global records, helping fuel discoveries in over 67 countries. Nearly half a million people took an AncestryDNA test to learn about their unique ethnic mix and to connect to hundreds … or even thousands of newfound genetic cousins. And more people than ever enjoyed the convenience of discovering and sharing their stories on the go with the Ancestry mobile app.

Good News: 2015 promises to be one of the most exciting in our own family history.

In the coming months, we’ll be introducing features that let you tell richer, more personal life stories about your ancestors, adding historical context around the times and events that shaped their lives. You’ll also see a new way to engage with other Ancestry members around a shared ancestor, helping you make new discoveries and collaborate like never before. If you’ve taken a DNA test, you’ll experience some new types of discoveries made possible by the groundbreaking DNA science and research teams. And everyone who visits Ancestry will find a simplified, easier-to-use site that puts important information front and center to make family stories the focus.

Most importantly, we will continue to add to the world’s largest online collection of family history records and content. Look for exciting additions like 170 million searchable images of probate records and wills that might reveal your ancestor’s dying wishes, all vital records from Virginia since 1900, substantial releases from Germany, and a milestone collection of almost 80 million Mexico Civil Birth, Marriage and Death records spanning from 1860 to modern day.

At Ancestry, we’re proud of all that we do to help you bring your family story to life. We think that this year’s new content and features are going to make the world’s leading online family history service even better.
Best wishes for the year ahead,
Tim Sullivan

Two-for-One Registration Offered for Genealogy Beginner’s Class at WRHS

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Jump-start your family research in the New Year by signing up for a beginning genealogy class coming up this Saturday, Jan 10, 2015, at Western Reserve Historical Society. With the theme “Opening the Door to Family History”, the three-hour class is sponsored by the Genealogical Committee, an auxiliary of WRHS. It will run from from noon to 3 pm.

Focus will be on gathering documents, vital records, and census information. To encourage you to attend, the Gen Committee invites you to register yourself for the class and bring one family member or friend at NO EXTRA COST. Presenters will be Pat Epperson and Heber MacWilliams, both Genealogical Committee members and experienced researchers. Plan to spend time after the class in the Research Library applying your new skills.

Registration fee is $15, which covers the cost of a packet of handout materials. Register online at www.wrhs.org or by emailing foxreinhardt@usa.net.

Book about 10th Mountain Div in WWII May Become a Movie

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While poking around on the Internet with Google, I learned about a project that Robert Redford apparently is working on: creating a movie based on the book Climb to Conquer, The Untold Story of WWII’s 10th Mountain Division, written by Peter Shelton and published by Simon and Schuster in 2003 (http://books.simonandschuster.com/Climb-to-Conquer/Peter-Shelton/9781451655100) . In late June and early July 2014 there were several news reports about Redford’s interest in the project. I can’t cite any more recent news items, because a Google search doesn’t turn up any more recent reports.

Climb to Conquer book cover

The publisher’s website provides the following background about the book:

Drawing on years of interviews and research, Shelton re-creates the ski troops’ lively, extensive, and sometimes experimental training and their journey from boot camp to the Italian Apennines. There, scaling a 1,500-foot “unclimbable” cliff face in the dead of night, they stunned their enemy and began the eventual rout of the German armies from northern Italy.

This intrigued me for a couple of reasons: 1. I recently have been reading accounts of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, in which Finnish ski-mounted troops held off the advance of a massive Soviet army for several months.  2. I remembered that Robert S Maddox, my boss at Penton Media (http://www.penton.com/) in the 1970s, had served in the 10th Mountain Div. in WWII.

I quickly did some research on Ancestry.com and in online newspaper archives and confirmed that Robert S Maddox enlisted in the Army on 23 Jan 1943, and he did indeed serve in the 10th. In fact, he served  as a “forward observer.” according to his obituary in 1984. His role as an observer made sense when I learned that he served in an artillery unit attached to the 10th.

I checked on Amazon.com for availability of the book, and found that it was available for Kindle. In reading the sample provided, I quickly concluded that Peter Shelton is a very entertaining writer.

Just for kicks, I checked on the availability of the book at the Cuyahoga County Library system (http://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/)  and learned that there was one copy of Climb to Conquer as an ebook. I quickly checked it out, and over the past two days have been reading it on my PC with Kindle Reader.

I don’t expect to learn anything specifically about Bob Maddox’s service with the 10th while reading Climb to Conquer, as he was only one of thousands to serve in the Division. But the book will give me an idea of what he most likely experienced from early in January 1943 through VE Day in 1949.

And it is proving to be a “good read.”