IGHR 2012 – Travel and Orientation

Posted on June 11, 2012 by

I am attending the Institute of Genealogy & Historical Research (IGHR) at Samford University for the first time this year.  This is a week long institute that is held every year in June.  There are several courses to choose from and this year I enrolled in Course 2: Intermediate Genealogy & Historical Studies.

I decided to drive rather than fly to Birmingham.  I left Austin on Saturday and spent the night in Vicksburg, MS.  I arrived in Vicksburg around 5 p.m. and went to the  Vicksburg National Military Park.  The nice thing is that the park is open until 7 p.m. and was free since the guard house closes at 5 p.m.  The negative side is that the visitor center also closes at 5 p.m., so I didn’t get to see the film or exhibits about the history.  I did the driving tour through the park and that took about 1 1/2 hours.  Then went on to my hotel for the night.

Sunday morning I drove from Vicksburg to Birmingham. It was pretty rainy most of the way. About 15 miles from the  Alabama border the traffic on I-20 came to a complete stop.  We were parked on the freeway for about an hour. Once we started moving again, whatever had stopped us must have been cleared up as I did not see any signs of an accident.  The rest of the way to Birmingham was uneventful.

I elected to stay in a hotel rather than the dorm rooms that are offered for the week.  I thought the comfortable bed of the hotel might make my week go by a little more smoothly. I checked into the hotel and then drove over to Samford to check in there.  I thought I would have to stand in a long line but the whole check-in process took about 5 minutes!  Everything was very streamlined.

My Course Notebook

There was an orientation dinner in the cafeteria which was very casual.  There are 10 concurrent courses and you received a name tag that is color coded with the course you are attending.  I found a table with 4 other “blue” name tags an we ate our dinner and got to know each other.

After dinner, we had a quick orientation of what to expect during the week and review our course notebooks. This was only about 15 minutes and then we were dismissed.The information in the notebooks was well prepared and didn’t need much explanation.

I went to Walmart for some groceries on the way back to the hotel as I plan on bringing my lunch with me most of the week.  I unpacked and got ready for a good night sleep.

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Finding R.F.D.3 Box 64B Kent, Washington in the 1940 Census

Posted on April 4, 2012 by

When my mother was 3 years old, she was living at the above address.  When you lived in a rural area, you did not have street names and house numbers.  All I had was this address I pulled from her baby book.   A rural mail route is not something you can enter directly into the 1940 Census One-Step tool at SteveMorse.org.  Since I had a general idea of where they lived, I was going to need to view the Enumeration District Maps.  Here is the process I went through.

  • Found the ED maps for King County, Washington through SteveMorse.org which will redirect to the images at the National Archives.
  • I first viewed the maps for Kent, Washington. These only included the town and the not the rural area I needed.
  • Next I viewed all of the maps listed for King County that were not tied to a city. There were 28 maps to view.
  • Found the general area on map 22 of 28. See highlighted yellow area.

NARA Series: A3378 Roll:00069 Frame:197

  • From this map I thought they would either be in Meridian (17-134) or Suise Creek (17-190) district.  I downloaded both of the districts, went through all the images and did not find them.  Then I noticed some faint writing to the left of the yellow highlighted area.  It was Russell district. I had a hard time making out the ED number and thought it was 17-177.  To make sure, I used the Unified 1940 Census ED Finder to confirm this.
  • I called up all of the Enumeration Districts in King County, Washington by entering the State and County and then clicking on the Get 1940 Ed Number(s) button.

 

  •  This will bring up all the ED numbers for the selected criteria.

  • Click on the radio button next to 1940 ED Description and then click on the ED number.  This will take you the Enumeration District Description.

NARA Series: T1224 Roll: 00117 Frame: 874

I have now confirmed that Russell Election Precinct is indeed number 17-177.

  • I downloaded the enumeration district images from NARA and started reviewing.  On the 12th image, I found my mom’s family.

I have to say that I am glad the initial release of the 1940 Census images are not indexed.  This is really forcing us to understand so much about the records and locations we are researching as well as the other record groups that exist.  This has been a very fun and educational process so far!

 

 

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Memories from an Airline Napkin

Posted on March 31, 2012 by

Trip route marked on napkin starting in Austin, pit stop in Dallas, and ending in St. Louis

Today I was going through some of my miscellaneous files and folders.  One of them was a folder from a trip to DeSoto, MO in 2007. This is the birthplace of my grandmother, Margaret Helen Snyder. As I was going through this folder, which mostly contained itineraries, maps and cemetery listings, I noticed something that was hiding in one of the pockets somewhat crumpled.  It was a Southwest Airlines napkin. I pulled the napkin out of the folder and noticed there was writing on it.  Apparently my daughter, then age 10, had written on it during the plane ride.

It started with the route we were taking as seen in the first picture.

 

 

Story on Airline Napkin part 1

As I flipped the napkin over I discovered a little story she had written.  The transcription follows:

‘Once upon a time long, long ago there was a girl named Ariel. Ariel was with her mom on a plane going to St. Louis. They Went to St. Louis because Ariels mom had to do Geneology. When they were going to St. Louis Ariel left half of her dinner in Austin. Ariel was really mad. So, She ate a power bar. When she arrived at St. Louis she got smothing to eat at’

Airline Napkin Story part 2

The funny thing is, I don’t remember seeing her writing this story on the napkin or putting it into the folder.  I asked her about it today when I found it and she doesn’t remember writing it.

The story is true. I do remember she had eaten half of her sandwich at the airport before our flight left and was going to save the other half for the plane ride.  When she discovered that she had left her sandwich sitting on the seat in the airport, she was very sad.  I did have an emergency Powerbar in my purse for her to eat and I did get her something to eat when we arrived in St. Louis.

I am also happy to report that her spelling has improved and she does know how to spell the word “genealogy” now.

Ariel at DeSoto City Cemetery, DeSoto, MO

She was a trooper during that trip.  We spent quite a few hours in cemeteries and libraries.  Here is a picture of my helper at the DeSoto City Cemetery. And that yellow folder she is holding in her arms? Yes, that is the folder I pulled that napkin out of today.

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Creating Custom Census Events in Legacy Family Tree – Video Demonstration

Posted on March 8, 2012 by

I thought I would create a quick video to demonstrate the methods I used to convert my generic “census” event in Legacy Family Tree to one that is based on the Year/Location of the census as I described in this post. In the video, I walk through creating a custom event, creating a search list of all individuals tied to a specific event, and using the Search List editing features to quickly edit individual events.

Posted in 1940 U.S. Census, Legacy, video | 1 Comment

My Blog Move and Google Reader

Posted on March 6, 2012 by

I spent last night moving my blog from Blogger to WordPress.  I finally got everything put back together,sub-domains, dns entries,etc. and thought everything was working fine last night (I guess it was technically early this morning).   I noticed today the Google Reader is displaying old posts.  I assume this happened when I updated the permanlinks to keep them the same as they were on Blogger.  I apologize to everyone for the unnecessary posts in Google Reader but it should no longer happen as everything is moved and updated.  Hopefully I won’t have any more technical issues!

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