Be Sure to Look Next Door

Some lines on my pedigree are a mess.

I've tried to straighten them out, and so have hundreds of other researchers.  I'm not sure that they're any better than they were a few years ago.

They're all in a wad.

The family lines I am particularly thinking about are the Mullins, who lived in southwest Virginia and southeast Kentucky.  The main problem occurs because of family names that appear in every generation and are spread out among all of the cousins in that generation.  Evidently, some family names were greatly favored.

One thing I love about research is looking at maps.  They can give such a wonderful bird's eye view of a vicinity.

But, most maps don't show the hills and the hollers and the creeks and the valleys and the cliffs...you know what I mean.  It takes a different map for that.

Recently, I was trying to figure out why I wasn't having much luck finding some of my family in the records of Floyd County, Kentucky.  They lived in the southeast part of that county, and should have gone to the county seat of Prestonsburg.

However, I did find several records next door in neighboring Pike County, where the county seat is Pikeville.

Why?

This may be the answer.  Let's look at it closely.

The bottom star is the area where my family lived.

Prestonsburg is the county seat, just to the northwest of them.

Pikeville is just across the county line into Pike County.

A flat map wouldn't tell us much.  But, look at the detail of a topographical map from GoogleEarth.  When the map is enlarged, greater details emerge showing much more of the lay of the land.

It just may have been easier to go next door and pay taxes in Pikeville...which you could do...as opposed to the distance and the terrain to go clear to Prestonsburg.

Just some food for thought.

More Than One County Seat...in the Same County?

Sometimes if you don't ask the right questions, you just never find out.

Marion Co., Ohio Courthouse

A few years ago, I was researching in a county that was known to have record losses through a burned courthouse.  And, I wasn't having much luck.  

As I was packing up to leave, the county worker asked me if I had tried searching in the north courthouse.  I wasn't sure what she meant, and she explained that there were actually two county seats in this county.

I had never heard of such a thing.

Sure enough, I found what I needed in the courthouse that hadn't burned, and one I didn't even know existed.  It was in the days before information was more easily accessible via the Internet.

Here is a list of United States counties with more than one county seat:  

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_seat

And, here is a screenshot I use in one of my presentations:

So, when you find out there has been record losses in one of your counties that you research, be sure to ask:

1. What years were burned?
2. Which years were not affected?
3. Where are they housed?
1. There is always a possibility they may have been housed in another location, such as an annex.
4. Ask how badly they were burned.
1. Think about it.  Have you ever tried to burn a book?  It's hard.  It may singe around the edges, but it really is difficult to burn the whole thing.

It was only a few years ago that two friends of mine went to research in a northwestern Kentucky county.  I don't recall if there had been record loss there, or not.

They didn't find what they had hoped to find, so they left and went across the street to a bookstore.  In a conversation with the owner, he asked what they were in town for.

They mentioned they had been researching at the courthouse, but hadn't had the luck they hoped to have.

He asked which records they were looking for, and when they told him, he said he had those in the back of the store!

In a bookstore!

Don't give up.  Here is another screenshot from one of my presentations concerning Adams Co., Ohio.

Seventy years!!!  Like I said, don't give up.

Free Offline Genealogy Tools

Week 4 – Free Offline Genealogy Tools: For which free offline genealogy tool are you most grateful? How did you find this tool and how has it benefitted your genealogy? Describe to others how to access this tool and spread the genealogy love.

This particular challenge takes me back to the days when I was a young girl getting my start in genealogy by watching my parents.

They did it the old-fashioned way - they still remember relatives born in the 1800's, and had first-hand knowledge of their stories, their recollections, their pictures, etc.  I would sit and listen and try to imagine myself living in their lifetime.  It seemed so far away...

My parents and I spent hours in courthouses, cemeteries and libraries.  My spelling and my handwriting was better than theirs, for I had received more education than they ever had the opportunity to obtain.  I would emerge from the dungeons of the courthouses covered in grit - and I LOVED it!  Some of the grit was the same grit ancestors had touched!!  I would run my hand over documents where their signatures were still visible, and wonder what their hands may have looked like.

But, nothing beats a cemetery.  As I state in the opening pages of my blog, I was in cemeteries when my mother was still pregnant with me.  My favorite picture is one where she is standing sideways on a bridge after a July 4th picnic.  She is getting ready for some cemetery transcribing just four days before I was born!

There we both are - Ida Stevens Clemens and me, Peggy.  I was born just four days later.

Once, when I was about 13 years old, my parents, my girlfriend and an older gentleman were in a cemetery on a Sunday afternoon.  Alice and I stayed together copying information, dad and mom were off on their own, and so was Brother Steele.  While all of my other friends were at the beach of the movies, I was in a cemetery.

My mother wore a wig.  Remember that.

Mom was down on her knees pulling weeds and trying to discover what was written on a sunken tombstone when she came face to face with a snake!  She jumped up and started doing this war-hoop dance and yelping.  Dad saw what was happening and came running with his brush - the kind you NEVER, ever use on a tombstone now.

Dad began beating this snake like it was an anaconda, when in fact it was about as long as one's arm.  The thing is, on the first strike, the snake got stuck in the wire bristles of the brush.  When he saw what had happened, he flung the brush upwards.  My mother looked up to see a snake headed straight down toward her.

My mother ran out from under her wig. 



But on any given day, turn me loose in a library.  Nothing beats a rainy day all cozied up in the corner of a library.  This is one of the first places I head to when on a genealogy trip.  I have hunkered down and read stories of ancestors, their neighborhoods and their neighbors that have taken me back in time and all over the world.  I don't want a tour of the library - just let me discover it all on my own...