I love obituaries from old, small town newspapers. They gave more detail and plenty of info to write a good story about the ancestor in you family history. This obituary for my 2nd great grandfather, Jacob Copus, gives the details of the day he died and a biographical sketch of his entire life. This is what I'd consider the perfect obituary. Wouldn't it be wonderful if they all contained this much information?
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In 2001, I received a note with this picture enclosed from my aunt Betty. In the note, she tells that her parents would get dressed up every Saturday to go to the Lyric Movie Theater in Lima, Ohio. Their favorite movies were the westerns. On the way to the theater, they would stop at Nesbitt's Candy Shoppe and get peanuts and candy to snack on during the movie. My aunt remembered the day this picture was taken because when Grandma and Grandpa Cheney went to the movies that evening, Grandma won a basket of groceries, which tickled her to no end. Grandma didn't have to go grocery shopping that week! Today, I want to talk a little about the blogging community. Since starting my blog, I've learn that there's a whole community of genealogical bloggers who give encouragement, insight, and support to each other.
One of the benefits of the blogging community is that many bloggers make the public aware of other blogs they find and enjoy. One blogger who does this is Jana Last who writes Jana's Genealogy and Family History blog. Every Friday, Jana lists blogs she has recently found and recommends those she's enjoyed to others. This benefits blog readers as they will discover new blogs they'll like and it benefits blog writers as it helps people find their blogs and become followers. If you enjoy discovering new blogs, then you'll want to check Jana's blog each week for her Follow Friday–Fab Finds and New Blog Discoveries. Jana listed me as a New Blog Discovery on December 21, 2012. Big thaks to you, Jana! I hope I can help pass the word about blogs I find that I think others will find as worthwhile reading, too. When I was newbie, I had barely heard of genealogy and had little idea what I was doing. I knew no one who was doing genealogy and nothing about books existing on the subject. I didn't know about genealogical societies, workshops, or conferences. I knew nothing!
I surfed the internet searching for "how to" articles and online lessons. One of the first websites I found was Leland Meitzler's now retired Heritage Quest which featured a writer named William Dollarhide. I devoured his articles! I loved his down to Earth, sometimes humorous style. I barely knew how to use a computer and didn't know how to save articles or bookmark websites so I printed out all of his articles. I still have them. Heritage Quest was taken off the internet and Dollarhide's articles were no longer being regularly published online. I was happy when Leland Meitzler started a new blog (GenealogyBlog) featuring articles by his friend, William Dollarhide. I want to thank Leland and Bill for being my first teachers and mentors and for continuing to share their knowledge online so that the rest of us may learn and enjoy what they share. Thanks, Leland and Bill. You're still the greatest! In the 1950's, my grandpa, Wilbur Silas Carder was awarded "Safe Driver of the Year" twice by the National Transit Company, the trucking firm that he worked for. The awards were engraved Zippo lighters, which were inherited by his sons, Charles and Harold. Wilbur's son, Charles was my dad. Before he passed away, Dad gave me Grandpa's Zippo and my uncle, Harold still has the other one. I was Wilbur's oldest grandchild and the only one who ever knew him. He passed away before my cousins were born. I have very few items that belonged to my grandpa or items that were gifts from him so the Zippo lighter with his name and "Safe Driver of the Year" is a special treasure to me.
A new genealogy software program became available this week. It's called Evidentia. It's not anther database program to keep track of our family trees but an extra to make them better.
Evidentia is to be used along side of your regular genealogy software to improve your research. It forces you to put in those sources and cite them as you go, instead of just putting down notes to write into "proper citations" later, as many of us are guilty of doing, at least some of the time. Instead of being focused on a particular person in your tree, it focuses on the sources. Once you fill in the information off of a source document, you can analyze the information for evidence and then it takes that information and helps you write a sound conclusion. The program is based on the Genealogical Proof Standard. That is what its purpose is, to make sure that you follow the GPS so that you'll get the most out of your research. You can find out more and watch videos at the Evidentia blog. The program is inexpensive and can be purchased on their page. I got mine yesterday and am sure that it's going to be a very useful tool. It seems to be simple to learn. Check it out. Did you see my interview on Geneabloggers?
http://geneabloggers.com/introduce-deborah-carder-mayes Thanks, Gini and Tom! Yesterday, I told about about my 2nd cousin, once removed, who passed away a week ago today. Because living family members are mentioned, I prefer not to post her obituary or those of her parents, however, her grandfather's obituaries contain no names of anyone still living so I will post them to give a little history of Audrey's direct line.
David Henry Carder was the brother of my great grandfather, Nathan Isaac Carder. I have 2 obituaries for David. The first is from the Lima News, Lima, Ohio and the second is from the Marion Star, Marion, Ohio. Mrs. Simon Barry named in the obituary was David's daughter, Lavella. She was Audrey's mother. I'm not going to discuss the content of the obits because you can read them for yourself. What I am going to discuss is why I have two obituaries for David. A few days ago, a very special lady died. Her death came as no surprise. She was 87 years old and had been in poor health for several years.
I met Audrey shortly after I began researching my father's family. Her grandfather and my great grandfather had been brothers, making her my 2nd cousin once removed. I found a message posted on Genforum by her niece. I recognized the ancestor and his hometown as the possible brother of my great grandfather so replied to the post. Much to my joy, we were cousins! Only living about 40 miles or so apart, the niece and I decided to get together and meet in person. The following Saturday, Audrey and her niece and my dad and I met at the ice cream stand down the road from my great aunt's house. I'll never forget her first words she said to us, "Do you like to fish?" We proceeded to go to my great aunt's, where we spend the afternoon getting acquainted and swapping family stories. Audrey and my great aunt, Marge reminisced. They remembered each other from their childhoods. We had a great day and we all became close friends as well as cousins. I continued to visit her up until a few years ago when her memory had faded away to the point where she probably wouldn't known me anymore. I would pick her up and off we'd go for the day. She introduced me to many relatives from her branch of the family and told me everything she could remember about our ancestors and relatives. Audrey was an intelligent lady with that Carder sense of humor and other family traits that I could see in her. It was with sadness and sympathy for her children and grandchildren that I read her obituary in the newspaper. She will be missed. May you rest in peace, Audrey, and know you were loved. In my last post, I recommended Cindy Freed's Genealogy Circle (see that post for link). I replied to a post on her blog about Civil War pension files. I thought my reply had information that is useful for all of you who are researching their Civil War ancestors so I'm posting it here also.
"Bill says that pension files are $25. If you click the NARA link he provided and look at the order forms, the compiled service records and the selected pension file packets are $30. The full pension file is $80. It is important to get the full packet. You'll get 3 or 4 times as much or more in the full packet. For example, before 2000, you could only get the selected documents. I ordered my gg grandfather, John M. Carder's file and received 16 pages. When the full files became available, I reordered it and got 89 pages, including an affidavit made by a daughter whose existence I hadn't known of until I received the second packet. Pension files are actually the cheapest records you can get when you think that an Ohio death certificate costs $27 for one page and a pension file averages over 80 pages. I have one that is 395 pages! Also, if the soldier died while in service and the widow filled for a pension, you can get it free on Fold3. A subscription to Fold3 costs less than the price of one pension file and you will find so much more about your ancestors on there that the subscription is a bargain. I love pension files. They are my favorite records because you get so much and get things that you won't ever find anywhere else. You can really get a good picture of your ancestors' lives through their pension files." |
Rambling Along the Ancestral Trail
******************** AuthorDeborah A. Carder Mayes is a genealogist, speaker, and writer in Ohio and Eastern Indiana. She has been researching her family history and actively involved in the genealogy community since 1998. SUBCRIBE
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Rambling Along the Ancestral Trail by Deborah A. Carder Mayes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Copyright © 2024 Deborah A. Carder Mayes
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Rambling Along the Ancestral Trail
Ramblings about my family history and tidbits about genealogy