Today I went to the Captain Smith Cemetery and found a couple of headstones for my family. As many of you know, I am currently researching my Keck Line and getting together the information for submission to DAR! I found the tombstone for Frederick Keck and his first wife Mary Polly Shofner.
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Kellie
I haven’t gotten much done on my genealogy the last couple of weeks. I have downloaded the latest update of the Second Site software that came out this week though! I will try to post an update to the website over the weekend using the new software!
Look for some new photo galleries and some new more interesting pages of information. I will also be adding in some information on the Stout and Hanna families from the Flashbacks at the library
More great stuff to come soon!
Kellie
Today and for the past few days, I have been working almost exclusively on my Keck history. I am working my way back to my patriot ancestor on the Keck line to allow me to join the DAR. I have been to a meeting and I found it to be a wonderful experience.
The first meeting that I had the pleasure to attend happened to be a very special meeting. The local chapter was dedicating a new monument to a Real Daughter of the American Revolution: Catherine Robards Stirman who died in 1900 but whose grave remained unmarked until Saturday, April 18, 2009.
I am still in the process of getting all my genealogy information into TMG. Last year, I completely restarted with a blank genealogy file and started by adding in all my information that I knew and that my mom and dad knew about the family. Then, I began going through the old clippings, documents, and photos that I had and adding in information that they provided. Also, I have begun adding in information from other sources that I have found online through my ancestry subscription or through other sources at the library or other locations.
The photo shown above is of Andrew and Isy Bolinger Keck. I obtained this photo online from Ancestry. Andrew is the son of my patriot Keck ancestor, Conrad Frederick Keck. I only like a few more sources and I think I will have my proof for my Keck line. I am requesting some copies from a library. More info to come when I hear back from them!
More to come soon,
Kellie
Welcome to the updates mailing list for 2009!
I have been busy for the past several days getting some new genealogy stuff added to the website! I have been doing some research on Ancestry and I found a lot of photos in January for my Barnes Line. I also spent some time at the library this month and found a couple of articles in some old Flashbacks that pertain to my Stout Line.
One of the articles on the Stout Line was written by Dan Westphal who did research in the early 1970s including some correspondence with my grandmother, greataunt, and great-grandfather Stout. He cites the Jonathan Stout Bible as one of his sources. My grandmother had possession of this bible at that time! The article also included a photo my Jonathan and Hanna Stout that I hadn’t seen before! I will be adding this photo to the website soon! Check out the website and look at the recent modifications page to get a sense of all the recent changes!
This year I am making a dedicated effort to get some of my genealogy stuff organized! I have tried following other people’s organization systems before and I finally admitted that I am not so good with following other people’s rules so I am developing my own organizational system! I made the first choice in that system that I think will make it work best for me – I am going paperless (mostly) with my system. All of my documents and photos will be scanned and added to my genealogy system and I can access them all from my computer! I use a laptop computer and live in an apartment so have bookcases or boxes full of stuff just isn’t working for me. I can store tons of info on just a few external drives and not drive myself crazy trying to store rooms full of stuff in one closet!!
I am not going completely paperless for everything though. I am still taking some of my photos and the interesting memorabilia and making scrapbooks! These are interesting enough that people who aren’t really into genealogy will look through but don’t take up tons of space storing documents that nobody wants to look at! And, best of all, I can spend my time researching instead of copying documents for folders that I never look at again! I am also saving a ton of money by not having to buy all the office supplies for the paper copies! I want my niece and nephews to look at the physical photos and get a sense of the history of our family. I want them to know how we all connect in this world and that there were many who came before them that made their lives possible today. The scrapbooks allow them to do that without boring them with the ton of documents
The other day one of my nephews said something that really struck me about how important it is that they get a since of history. Sometimes we forget how soon something becomes history! He was floored by the fact that I was born in the 19s! To him any date that starts with a nineteen instead of a 20 is ancient history! I don’t feel ancient but I guess it is all in how you look at it!
Good luck researching in February!
Kellie
Hello Everyone,
I finally got the website updated tonight! There are fifteen census records online now as well as many more updates! The website now features over 150 people with many more to come!
Also, if you haven’t checked out the website in the last couple of weeks, I have added a new BLOG. I am updating the blog every day or so with information on what I have added to my genealogy data as well as what I have added to the website. Please feel free to add your comments about the website!
The past couple of days I have been refining the census tags to make them more reader-friendly. The additions/revisions for the past five days have concentrated on the Treat, Thompson, and Barnes families.
Another big addition for the past few days was the information from the Madison County Genforum Board posting by Joy Russell on the Thompson family. I added a lot of information from this post regarding the Allie Fields Thompson family and his descendants. Allie Fields is the brother of my great-grandfather Vern Thompson.
Glenn also sent me a report of the descendants of John Treat that I have used to add information to my Treat line. Thanks Glenn.
I will also be adding some photos to the website in the next few days. I am going to be going through some more of the unidentified photos that I have and adding some of those to the website in the hopes that some of you might recognize the people and help me identify them. I also have some photos of early schools in Madison County that I will be posting!
More to come soon,
Kellie
I have completely revised my website within the last few weeks. A lot of that revision has been from my change in genealogy programs.
Previously, I used Legacy Family Tree: I even had a page on my website recommending the program. I still think that it is a worthwhile, good genealogy program.
However, I have recently change to the Master Genealogist available from http://www.whollygenes.com for my personal genealogy research. I downloaded the trial version because I was frustrated trying to get everything into the current program. It took a lot of copy/paste to get everyone who was listed on a census updated with an event indicating that they were listed on that census. The same was true for people who were mentioned in an obituary, funeral card, newspaper article, or other document.
I even took a detour and tried the lastest Family Tree Maker (2008). That is a detour worthy of a whole lot of pages from the problems that I had with program and data reliability!
Back to today’s story, when I tried the newest version, for some reason, the software just clicked to me! It’s use of tags allows me to enter an event one time with associated memos, source citations, and exhibits but then to link everyone associated with the event as witnesses. Through the use of the roles, I can even detail their connection to the event. For instance, when I find a census record, I enter it once on the head of household’s screen. When I link in the others listed using the appropriate roles, the software automatically adds events to their screens that link back to the original event! When I view reports on those people, the event is listed including their connection to the event! No more copy/paste on the events! Also, if I need to change something on the source citation on that event, I don’t have to find all the places for that citation, I can just change the citation on the one event! What a time saver!!
I also love the add-on program second-site that I use with the software to create my new website! This program creates the website in a narrative format. It sounds like the story of my family complete with photos and images of records. I will even be able to create CDs of the family history specialized with my niece and nephews relationships to everyone for their Christmas presents!! Maybe I can get them interested in our family history!
I have been entering my family history in the new program over the last few weeks. I have a lot in so far but MUCH to go! I am entering everything as fast as I can to get everything that I currently know into the program. However, in order to take advantage of TMG’s features and to recover from the many data problems I had after using FTM 2008, I am entering by hand all of my genealogy info in TMG and making sure that everything gets sourced to the best level of my information now! This is taking a while but I am much, much more comfortable with the reliability of my data and my knowledge of where I obtained that data.
My data is currently has 543 people with 650 attached exhibits. The exhibits include 400 different family photos. Please be aware though that many of these are not shown on my website because I do not display on the website information on living persons. However, some details on living persons may be included in obituary transcriptions, etc. However, these sources are public information so only otherwise public information is displayed on the website.
Please feel free to email if you have any questions/comments/corrections regarding my genealogy information.
I have also started a new mailing list for my genealogy. I have added to this list everyone with whom I have exchanged genealogy information. As you can see from the headers, each person will only see their own email address when they receive my email messages. The mailing list will allow me to send out general messages to update everyone about what I have added to my website and my genealogy information in general without having to keep track of who specifically was waiting for what information. That has quite frankly become overwhelming for me and I forget to send everyone what they need. As I add something to my website, I will update everyone via this list that way I will hopefully keep everyone up-to-date on what info I have available. Please continue to feel free to email with any specifics and I will try to respond but this way I don’t have to remember everyone who wanted an update when I found out/added more about my Treats/Stansells/Thompsons/Lawrences/Reynolds etc and what they were waiting on and you will be updated when I add new information and not have to keep checking to see what I have updated! Let me know your thoughts on the mailing list.
Also, my website now contains a new feature that lists the last date that I edited each person’s data. This should allow you to see at a glance if your ancestor’s information has changed. Also, I added in a Recent Modifications page that lists the people whose entries I have modified in the several days before I uploaded the website the most recent time.
By the way, the new photo galleries page includes a list of several different photo galleries that are separated by surname and some additional galleries just to keep things interesting. I welcome your comments/suggestions for the website.
Also, I have created a new blog for the website! I will of course be adding entries for my genealogy updates, however, you may also find entries added for anything else that might come to mind on any given day. Check it out and let me know what you think!
The emails to this list will also be archived on the blog.
Future emails will focus more on the information that I have updated and my joys/triumphs and distressing failures to find information!
I will email again soon.
Kellie S. Thompson
Website: http://www.ksthompson.com
Email: genealogy@ksthompson.com
