Love that light that finally peeks thought the clouds!
It has been a couple of very interesting weeks for my in Family History and Genealogy. I love it when you are in the process of learning and suddenly the clouds part in a way that let's you actually comprehend the bigger picture. Those 'aha moments' are very reinforcing. I realized this week that we truly do learn line upon line. I ran across a quote by Albert Einstein that said essentially the purpose of obtaining knowledge is to learn how to think.
Could there be a better quote for genealogy? Well probably, but I do like that one. The application of what we learn is where the value lies.
So we have been talking about finding documents for a long time. Still we struggle with the searching, right? We have billions of records we can access and that is such a blessing....only if we can find them! The strategies of ruling out everything we don't want, to find that one piece of evidence we do want can be daunting.
Push it away!
Like a swimmer doing the breast stroke, think of how they point their arms and hands at one place and then push the excess water away from them to create the path that gets them to the other side of the pool. They keep a focus, kick like crazy and eventually find their mark. Visualize billions of records in your way, then try to push through them. With records we call it search perimeters, or filtering. The more we experiment with it the better we get at it. Putting our hands on it is an absolute necessity.
Here are some things that I learned this week.
*Just when you think you have it...you realize you don't. Genealogy is a bit like being a parent. Just when you feel like you are on top of it, they throw you a curve ball to keep you humble. Acquiring each record presents its own separate and often unique set of challenges.
*When you feel you are really spinning your wheels and getting no where, ask for help. Someone else will know something you don't, gladly share it and save you a ton of time and frustration. Then pay it forward by telling someone else. Don't just quit, get help to solve the problem. Often just asking someone will not only solve the problem at hand but make your future searches easier too. Following the challenge to a solution will leave an impression upon your mind that you won't easily forget.
*When you don't give up easily you practice the art of thinking. Like Einstein said..using knowledge to learn how to think is where the value lies.
*This is a big one for me, I learned how to use Ancestry and Family Search together to do a lot of the document searching for me since I often struggle with it on my own. With the Shaky Leaves from Ancestry and the Record Search on Family Tree and Smart Match coming from My Heritage/Family Search strategic partnership, I am really happy to have a hand up from the big guys! When I find someone online I attach that person to both my Ancestry Tree and Family Search FamilyTree and let the various search engines find a record that most often will lead me to others as well.
*I have been adding a lot of records to my Family Tree on Family Search this week and I have realized even more that the very act of doing that teaches you so much. Our ancestors just come alive when we Read about them and Think about them. The analysis is the key to the joys of doing this work. Einstein was right...the value is in the thinking part of the process. Thinking about how to work smarter and how to analyze what we fine with the purpose of getting to know our family in 3D.
I did a search this week that opened my eyes, heart and mind to this in a new way so I thought I would have you try the same search I did. Maybe you will find it right away. Maybe you will struggle with it like I did. Here is our case study.
The person we will be trying to find is Frank Joseph Colberg:
Frans Josef Johnasson was born in
Ale-Skövde, Västra Götaland, Sweden on 13 March 1876. He was born to his father, Johan Andreasson and his mother, Albertina Josefina Christiansdotter and was their first child.
When Frans was 5 years old they emigrated out of Sweden in July of 1881. His name on his emigration documents was Frans Josef Kullberg. His father was a tenant farmer in Sweden and the name of his farm was Kullenberg. It was at that time that a lot of people were taking the name of their dwelling places as a surname. That is what this family did when they left Sweden for America.
Upon arrival they became John Colberg and Josephine Colberg and Frank Joseph Colberg.
Finding the family in America was easy but not finding Frank. He missed the 1880 census but one year, 1890 burned and so the first one we find the family in is 1900. They lived in both North and South Dakota over their years in America. I could not find anything in the US on Frank. Why? See if you can. Hint. He is there somewhere.
Next week I'll show you how to do it if you do not find it this week. Or if you really have to know sooner...contact me and I'll share with you! For those of you in the classes you can ask me today if you need help. Have fun!
Next week I'll show you how to do it if you do not find it this week. Or if you really have to know sooner...contact me and I'll share with you! For those of you in the classes you can ask me today if you need help. Have fun!
************The Solution************
I have found that you have to be somewhat methodical about how you search while at the same time trying lots of different things. I looked everywhere I could think of with various filtering techniques, looking under all his name possibilities, various states, I used the catalog and I finally just ran out of ideas. When I asked Stephen he found him pretty quickly and this is how he did it.
In his search field he entered just Frank...not Colberg after he had tried the usual drills. No wonder I could never find him, that was the one variable that remained constant in my searching. Last name. I wasn't thinking about that because I was not searching by the "Exact" perimeter. Stephen explained to me that the enumerator was very likely to know the popular given names of the day but most likely would butcher the last name. That makes sense when you think about it. Thinking outside the box can be key to figuring out some of this stuff. Every record feels like a fingerprint. There is just enough variation between them all to make them unique and interesting.
Look at the name that came up on the census record for 1010. It says Coburg not Colberg.
The Soundex and phonetic features of the search engine on Ancestry would have worked better if the emulator had left out or used a different letter like U instead E for berg as both sound about the same. Berg and Burg. But by leaving out the L it changed everything. Why is that? Consonants have more distinctive sounds than vowels. What happens when you leave a consonant out? It changes the sound of the word, right? So the search engine turns to the sound Cob not Col. That then produces a lot of choices without the Col sound which is very important to that particular name. Well, going through this exercise was very valuable to me even though I didn't find him on the census on my own. My friend was able to broaden my horizons here and that is why asking was important to my growth when searching.
Another thing he entered into the advanced search field was "Lived in" in the filters which implies that at one time he lived in Sioux Falls, Minnehaha, South Dakota but he was not saying he necessarily lived there in this time period. The first location on the search form option presumes he was living there then. He entered it the way he did because that is where Frank's family lived, he didn't know where Frank was in 1910 at that point. Searching like this left more options and it paid off. In fact we knew nothing about him other than he immigrated to the US in 1881 with his parents at age five. And I did extract from one old letter from a cousin that he thought Frank was a cook. Look how valuable that clue turned out to be. If you look at the record, it mentions he was a cook on the census.
Unfortunately Frank died the very next year in March of 1911. Leaving Emma with four little children. As I was adding all their information in Family Tree I realized that one more child had been born to her named Frances June. She was born just three months after her father died. This family has become very important to me in our family history. I had great sympathy for this young woman, now a widow with five children to raise. I do know she married again and that helped her go forward in that responsibility. I really want to know how Frank died so I am sending for his death certificate.
I hope this exercise was helpful to all of you that tried it. The staff members that were present in the class said they really like it and learned a lot. Good job, Judy, on finding the death record! And congrats to Joe for finding a few City Directory items as well.
So put some of these things in your little bag of tricks for the next time you get stuck on finding someone. I know I sure will.
If you are reading this on the subscription feed, you can return to that actual blog here.
http://alegacythatmatters.blogspot.com
Look at the name that came up on the census record for 1010. It says Coburg not Colberg.
The Soundex and phonetic features of the search engine on Ancestry would have worked better if the emulator had left out or used a different letter like U instead E for berg as both sound about the same. Berg and Burg. But by leaving out the L it changed everything. Why is that? Consonants have more distinctive sounds than vowels. What happens when you leave a consonant out? It changes the sound of the word, right? So the search engine turns to the sound Cob not Col. That then produces a lot of choices without the Col sound which is very important to that particular name. Well, going through this exercise was very valuable to me even though I didn't find him on the census on my own. My friend was able to broaden my horizons here and that is why asking was important to my growth when searching.
Another thing he entered into the advanced search field was "Lived in" in the filters which implies that at one time he lived in Sioux Falls, Minnehaha, South Dakota but he was not saying he necessarily lived there in this time period. The first location on the search form option presumes he was living there then. He entered it the way he did because that is where Frank's family lived, he didn't know where Frank was in 1910 at that point. Searching like this left more options and it paid off. In fact we knew nothing about him other than he immigrated to the US in 1881 with his parents at age five. And I did extract from one old letter from a cousin that he thought Frank was a cook. Look how valuable that clue turned out to be. If you look at the record, it mentions he was a cook on the census.
Unfortunately Frank died the very next year in March of 1911. Leaving Emma with four little children. As I was adding all their information in Family Tree I realized that one more child had been born to her named Frances June. She was born just three months after her father died. This family has become very important to me in our family history. I had great sympathy for this young woman, now a widow with five children to raise. I do know she married again and that helped her go forward in that responsibility. I really want to know how Frank died so I am sending for his death certificate.
I hope this exercise was helpful to all of you that tried it. The staff members that were present in the class said they really like it and learned a lot. Good job, Judy, on finding the death record! And congrats to Joe for finding a few City Directory items as well.
So put some of these things in your little bag of tricks for the next time you get stuck on finding someone. I know I sure will.
If you are reading this on the subscription feed, you can return to that actual blog here.
http://alegacythatmatters.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment