Valuations now available for Scotland

I started this year working on the new valuations now available from the General Registrar’s office for Scotland, on which it was easier to identify ancestors than in Ireland which also has at least one valuation available.  I know a lot of information about my Scottish ancestor’s location from records I got from their web site www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk , but know next to nothing about my ancestors when they lived in Ireland. The valuations is a list of owners and tenants on prosperity showing the address of the prosperity and  just show the head of households with  their occupations  and how much they paid for rent.  Good confirmation has well at a little more of what their lives must have been live back in 19^th century Scotland.

What’s in a name?

I have been looking for my Grandmother’s birth record, on my father’s side for over ten years thinking her name was Annie Wallace, hell Annie was even on her Tombstone. No matter how I tried I could not find it, so as I was trying yet again without luck, I decided to look again at the UK Census on which she was listed. Low and behold on the 1881 UK Census which was only two years after she was born in 1879 her name was listed as Ann not Annie. So I tried Ann instead of Annie and Bing-ho her 1879 Birth Registry came up. Now in hindsight in comes to me, why didn’t I think of that before. Everyone since she was a little girl probably called her Annie so even she thought that was her name and not just a nickname.

          The funny thing is a similar thing happens on my mother’s side, only I knew about it since my mother told me of it. See my mother was named Jeanette after her mother, who thought her name was Jeanette only to learn that her name on Birth Registry that her name was actually Janet not Jeanette, but it was Jeanette that was passed down.

          Another time that I had trouble with a nickname that wasn’t from the family, but from a Census taker, who put my Great-Grandfather name on the 1881 UK Census as Paddy instead of Patrick, which might have been a slur because he was an Irish Catholic in Protestant Scotland. I was able to find the Census from his son Robert, my Grandfather.

          Even our last name Boyle is actually a Norman name meaning woods, but what is appeared is that my family changed their last name probably from a Celtic name to get along in occupied Ireland.  

Free Family Tree of Family Search

While using https://www.familysearch.org/ I found that they offer a free family tree similar to the one offered by wiki at http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page, only the Family Search site is only the basics, but it does help on my searches of their site. It does have where you can put your source and it will reference your on line sources. I always make free Family trees Dead people trees since anyone has access to it. Sometimes when I put in a person’s information it will fill in the next generation I guess from the data they already have in their data banks. I personally like on line trees as it makes me think that I am not wasting my time collecting all this information for people that will ignore it or even throw it all away when I become an ancestor and that it will be available to future generations anywhere in the world.

My Genealogical work in 2012

January seem like a good time to write about how my genealogical research went in 2012, well I did make some progress on my wife’s side on the tree, Eiermann, Stark and not much on my side. I did get my parents Marriage certificate from the New York City Archives, getting the information necessary from the New York City Library on 5^th Avenue, along with a list of information that would be necessary for more certificates from the New York City Archives about my wife’s Aunt and Uncles.  

I used information that people such as Eileen Stark put on Facebook to get both photos and information about Eileen’s family, the Stark family is connection to the Eiermann line through one of my wife’s Great-Aunts who married a Duffy, who married a Karasz, who married then divorced Eileen Stark, so the relationship is through Eileen’s four children who are cousins to my wife. Well with all that as clear as mud I used the photos and companying information to research the Stark family back to Hungary, they ended up to be a very interesting addition to the tree with her Grandfather owning a restaurant in downtown Manhattan with a lot of newspaper articles about it during prohibition. I did get the permission of Eileen to use her data.

Family Search the Web Site of the Church of Latter Day Saints helped a great deal on my breaking through on the Eiermann front, where I am now all the way back to the 15^th century. My son Michael helped by getting a microfilm from the LDS in Salt Lake City to the Patchogue Library, We viewed the microfilm at the Patchogue Library, even with the fact it was hand written in German on the pages an old book we could make out the names and dates. Now we could the same information from the transcription of the microfilm on the LDS web site, but by put to images of the original church record on a flash drive then onto my computer the information became first hand, direct instead of second hand indirect information, confirming the information you already have is very important in that it make your family tree more accurate. I am still working on the Eiermann branch of the tree, now putting it on my Roots software.

I have three different genealogical programs on my computer, the one I am now working on is RootsMagic 6, I like it for it has good templates for source information, but I am afraid it is too completed for people not familiar with genealogy. I also have Family Tree Maker 2012 which is easier to understand and can be synced up with Ancestry.com, but I have trouble syncing it up and then I have MyHeritage Family Tree Builder Which is cheaper, good for connecting with other peoples trees, but poor on sources templates.  

Making corrections

I have been going along thinking that I vetted all the 2079 People I put on my family tree, but then when I tried to upload a Gedcom file onto the Wiki web site werelate.org and they came back with four pages of what they saw as errors or warnings. So I guess I didn't do as good a job as I thought . Now a lot of the error were children being born before marriage, which were not  errors just  some of my ancestors having a bit of fun. The error list also had made the calibration that women have their children between the ages of 18 and 45 years old,  any born too early or too late maybe an error. Others were events happening after death, but the event listed were where parents names were put on marriages of their children after their deaths.

          The lesson learned is that no matter how careful you think you have been its a good idea to run correction test once in a while. A lot of the trouble has been automatic records from ancestry.com had some errors that I didn't catch and adding information from other peoples research that had errors. So the fix is going slow analyzing the incoming data.

Who do you think you are? Rich

Who do you think you are? The television series on NBC  by Ancestry.com is interesting showing what you could do with your genealogy if you only had lots of money to spend on experts to do all the work for you. even if you do manage to go to some of these places like old churches the chance that you will find someone to point out where to find the  records are kind of small. Then would they  let you  handle old fragile records with your bare hands,  I don't think so! they only tell the most interesting stories, I get that they need to keep their audience watching, but  give could give a little explanations of  the process of finding the information and making sure it is correct.

          I personally have just a small limited income to spend on the  genealogy  of my family so the internet is my best friend and I do like ancestry.com were I spend over  three hundred dollar a year even if it is really a little out of my range, I find it does gives the best information on both the USA and the UK plus they have the best on line family tree, even if it does need improvements like on their PDF stories that have to be downloaded to read. They  also tend to group information together  like all of a certain years census are all lumped in one big list, where I would rather range them by family, 1880 US Census for John Doe and family rather than 1880 United States Federal Census which makes it hard to find a census for a certain family. I still think ancestry.com is worth it, but I am contently looking at other  genealogy web sites.

                                                                                      

A Good Month and a half on improvement of my Family Tree

First as of April 1^st the 1911 UK Census came out in Scotland on which I found my mother just 1 year old Plus cousins, Aunts and uncle with good information to move foreward Then I joined the Heritage Family Tree Web site and quickly found my cousin Wallace Hamilton, whose family my parents and I visited when they lived in Buffalo NY. I know I was a young teenager at the time (by a photo it might have been 1955) I don't remember such about the visit accept that Wallace's older sisters took me unwilly to a Public Pool at their mother's command and Talking with them as we wash the dishes one night and that we talked so much that their mother didn't think we did a very good job. Wallace and I E-mailed each other back and forth making corrections on each other's Family trees (I gave him access to my Family Tree on ancestry.com) Wallace ask me about my Aunt Vera, who I didn't know much about other than a few photos and what I remember from what my father had said through the years ( I always wish I asked more questions) I wrote to him that I would call our cousin Anne Reilly who also lives on Long Island.
    It turned out to be a very fortunate phone call I made to Anne who is the daughter of my Aunt Mary on my Father's side, for it seems that Aunt Vera's family lived down stairs from her sister Mary's family so Anne grew up with my Aunt Vera. One thing I learned is that Vera is the name everyone calls her, but her legal name is Sarah Veronica Boyle (Gallacher) which explains why I could not find her on scotlandspeople.gov.uk web site. Once I knew her name I found her marriage and Death Registries. My Aunts and my Father were all born in the United States and returned to Scotland, this I knew, Anne told me that her mother told her that she was about ten years old when the family returned to Scotland, Anne mother I knew was born in 1904 so I looked on ancestry.com at the passage list for ships returning to Scotland and found them on the Ship Numidian that traveled from Boston to Glasgow on 21 November 1913. Anne also said she had photos and newspaper clippings that she would send, I ask Anne if it was alright if Wallace Hamilton call her and she said it would be fine with her.
    So since April 1^st I added and subtracted people on my Family Tree a net gain of about 20 people and learned a little more about my family