Index of Labels

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Posting more documents on Family Tree

About four years ago, I prepared a document "The Descendants of Johann Altgelt, Lay Judge of Siegen."  He was a distant ancestor of Cyrene Standley Merrill (8th great grandfather) and her father Alexander Scoby Standley.  It is 114 pages.  I have it in PDF format that I can e-mail to anyone interested. There are photos that I took of the cities mentioned and the original document in German and then a descendancy chart in English with the line to the Standley and the Stolts families with an index of names at the end.  I put this on Family Tree today.  I have not yet tagged all of the individuals mentioned in the document.  That will be my next big project.

You can download it from there.  Since Family Tree does not want patriarchal blessings on the web, I had to re-edit the document to exclude the ones I had in the original, but I do have the original with the blessings that are in a small enough file to attach to an e-mail.

The introduction details the provenance of the original document.  I put this together into PAF while I was in Frankfurt on our mission in 1997-2000 and then finished the document in 2009.   

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Finding lost relatives



My grandson Nicholas was called to serve in the Manchester New Hampshire mission.  His first area of service was in Middlebury, Vermont.  When he went to church he met a brother Gee.  I e-mailed him and asked him to get me some information on this brother Gee. His name was Edward Gee.  I asked my grandson to get some information about his parents.  This was his reply:



His parents are Albert Richard Gee and Phyllis H. Gee

His grandparents to that side are Walter Allen Gee and Bertha Sumner.

He doesn’t remember how to spell them, so I had to guess, so the spelling may differ.



With this information I looked on Family Tree and found the individuals. 



I wrote him the following:



I found his parents and grandparents on Family Tree.  There are some ordinances that need to be done. You might let him know of these.  If he would like me to do them, I would be happy to do it or process them and send him the cards to take to the temple.



Our common ancestor is Solomon Gee of Lyme, Connecticut. 



His line goes as follows; Edward, Albert Richard, Walter Allen, Willis Freeman, Allen B, Solomon, Leuman, Solomon Jr. and Solomon Gee of Lyme Connecticut. (8 Generations).



Your line goes as follows, Nicholas, Rachel, Ivin Laurence, Ivin Lafayette, William Erastus, Erastus Rowe, Lysander, Salmon, Zopher, William, Solomon Gee of Lyme Connecticut (11 generations)



Looking in Family Search Record Search, I found the birth date for Edward and also his parents and grandparents.  I also found three of his siblings and their birth dates and birthplaces.  I also found five siblings for his grandfather and one for his grandmother.  There were ordinances to be performed for these individuals as well.



I still need to do further research and work on this line back to Solomon.  Most of the work has been done, but sources need to be attached.

There is work enough to e'er the sun goes down, on my life at least. 

I also found a gee cemetery just outside of Middlebury.  This does not seem to be indexed.  Another project 


Thursday, October 24, 2013

My experience with documents in Family Tree



My experience with documents in Family Tree

I looked on the blog and found that they had added a Beta or trial to upload PDF files to Family tree.  It is called Documents and can be found on the right if one clicks on photos.




I uploaded a 114 page PDF document of 8 + megabytes and it was a bit slow, but it did upload without a problem.  I linked it with the individual on Family Tree and that seemed to go seamlessly, however when I went to the person on Family Tree, It did not show up.

I had changed a PDF photo of a death certificate that I had previously attached as a photo to show as a document.  Now what I get is the following when I click on documents:



The Death Certificate appears and is attached to Frances Gates record, but the PDF file indicates that the Processing failed.


If one clicks on the Processing Failed the following PDF file appears.
The file is still there, but it appears to be unattached to the record.

I will have to check with support to see what happened.


Saturday, October 12, 2013

A new distant cousin

In my last blog entry I detailed the unexpected discovery of a first spouse for Susan Eliza Gee.  She married a man by the name of Windsor Palmer Lyon and had one child by him before he died.  In the Mormon Pioneer Overland database the child is listed as Charles William Luddington, but his surname was really Lyon.  He married Sarah Eldora Willey and they had three children.  For a descendancy document please see the link to my Adventure in Family Tree in the previous blog.

The descendant that I contacted about this, Jamie Johnson, noted in her e-mail to me that she was traveling from Houston to Salt Lake in October.  Yesterday she and her husband contacted me and came for a brief visit.



 She graciously allowed me to take a photo.  So now I know what another distant cousin looks like.  They served in the Houston temple at the same time when our neighbor William R. Bradford was the temple president.  They later served in the temple presidency. They were on their way to Idaho for a missionary reunion.  He was the mission president there some time ago.



 

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Working on Family Tree

I have been working in Family Tree adding sources, photos and otherwise doing what I can to improve the records.

This is a list of the changes


Ida Judd Source Added

Harry Thomas Cory Source Added

Doris Ellen Lincoln Source Added

Herald Eugene Smith Source Added Two photos Added

Eugene Loren Lincoln Source Added

John H. Cory Source Added

Walter Judd Source Added

Susan Eliza Gee Source Added

Edward Larkin Discussion Added
 
Frank Eugene Lincoln Source Added
 
Erika Holz Source Added

 Amos Botsford Fuller Sources and photo Added

William Erastus Gee Source Added

Mary Ellen Kerr Source Added
 
Marion Joseph Kerr Source Added
 
Stephen G. Rowe Source Added
 
Esther Beckwith Source Added
 
Abigail Mack Source Added

I also put together another Adventure in Family Tree.This is the case of the unexpected husband.  Click Here to read.  This involves Susan Eliza Gee my great great grand aunt.







































Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Two in a Day


More posts because I had a day when I was required to spend time in the down stairs.  We had the upstairs floors carpets cleaned.  I found a few things that I was not expecting.  So I added these histories to Family Tree.





Another History for George

Another History of Salmon Gee


Esther Smith Fuller the mother of Sophina Aclesta Fuller Gee

John Gee, Erastus Rowe Gee’s younger brother.

More Gees and Stories




Today I added two photos of Louisa Gee and a Story  (her obituary) on Family Tree.

Also the Death announcement mailed to her half-sister Caroline Gee McGavin.  Robert McGavin married two of Lysander’s daughters by two different wives.  Caroline was living at the time in Glenn, Idaho. This may have been Glenn’s Ferry or perhaps another, now forgotten, city in Idaho. Caroline’s last child was born in 1903 in Freedom, Wyoming and she died in Idaho Falls, Idaho.  Since she lived in Bingham county Idaho in 1910 according to the census, I assume that Glenn, Idaho was in this neighborhood.

I placed three sources on her record and then as a source I placed a history of Caroline by her daughter Jesse Loveland.  I had a link in discussions, which I placed in 2010, but now that one can add links to Internet sites in sources, I moved the link so that it doesn’t have to be copied into the browser search bar.

I also added history on Robert McGavin, which I had in my archives.

I had a little story about Caroline in PDF format, which I converted to a Word document and added to stories.

I posted a time line for Erasmus Gee.  He was Erastus Rowe Gee’s oldest brother. There are already stories that I have placed on his record.

I also added a history of Erastus Rowe Gee by my father.  Unfortunately the document was unfinished.







Monday, August 12, 2013

A Voice from the Dust

That title sounds familiar.  I get an occasional Bulletin from World Vital Records. This one had an interesting Post.

I have done this in a not so sophisticated manner that worked well for me.  I had a cassette tape of my son John interviewing my father-in-law H. Marco Clark.  I bought a cable for about $10 from Radio Shack.  My laptop computer sits very close to my audio player in our kitchen,  It plays 33 1/3 LP vinyl records, 45 RPM vinyl records, CD and cassette tapes.  I put the tape into the tape player and plugged one end of the cable into the earphone jack.  The other end of the cable went into the microphone input on my laptop computer. This automatically brought up a screen and I had previously downloaded a Wave Pad Sound Editor from this Site.  It is from NCH software.  They have a professional version, but I use the free version, because I do not intend to go commercial.

I started the tape and then started the Sound Editor, adjusted the volume and recorded the tape on both sides. Once I had the complete recording, I used the sound editor to stitch the two sides together,  then saved the files in MP3 format. and burned them to a CD.  After this it was easy to make a copy of the CD for each of my children and my brother-in-law and his children.

Since then, I found a neat little portable tape player at Kohl's on sale for $25.00.  It has a USB connection and comes with installation software .  It is manufactured by *ION and is labeled Tape Express.   It has the advantage that you can listen to the audio at the same time you are recording. I have used this to transfer cassette recordings of music ( I have in excess of 100 tapes) to the computer and then move them to iTunes and then have them available to transfer to my iPhone or my  wife's iPad or an iPod or other MP3 player.

About a year ago my daughter called me and asked me if I still had my old hand held Dictaphone that I used in my office in Wyoming.  It used mini cassettes.  I never throw anything away, so I dug it out.  There was a lady in her ward that had some of her grandfather's history on a few of these mini cassettes and since they were outdated she could find no one who could even find one so that she could transcribe them.  I was able to hook up the cable to my laptop as I had done before and made a CD with multiple copies for family members.


Sunday, August 11, 2013

More Additions to Family Tree and another Adventure

I did get some more postings to Family Tree and updated my own database with the postings. Click on the links below.

Alexander Scoby Standley 

Salmon Gee Research Notes 

Photo of Orlando Lysander Gee family

Now I just have to identify all the members of the family in the photograph. I did this once before, but can't readily locate the e-mail that I sent. 

I also wrote up a little Adventure in Family Tree that I posted to the family history class website.  This is a little exercise in how to deal with duplications of ordinances.  

There is more to come.  I just need the time. There are more histories that I have, but they need to be scanned and converted to a machine readable format.



 

Thursday, August 8, 2013

More Additions to Stories on Family Tree

Here we go again with more stories from the archives.  Click on the name and it will link you to the posted stories.

Marriner W. Merrill

William Erastus Gee

W. E. Gee

W. E. Gee Editorial


Mary Ellen Kerr Gee

Life Sketch of Mary Ellen Kerr Gee given at her funeral.

This is probably enough to digest fro one sitting. Today is our fifty-fifth wedding anniversary.  So I will not be doing much digging in the records.



Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Adding histories from the archives

I snatch a few minutes here and a few there and am able to add a history or two when I can't go back to sleep.  Here are the additions.  Just click on the name for the link.

Vernon Ray Gee

Philinda Upson

Nancy Jane Rawlins

Marion Joseph Kerr

Ella Rebecca Merrill 

There are more.  It just take time to add them.
 
 
 

 

Sunday, August 4, 2013

More Additions from hidden sources

Today I was looking around on my computer for some files to put on Family Tree.  There were a number that I ran into. I had them on my Compaq laptop which was the computer that I had before the last one, a Dell laptop. It crashed and now I have a new one running Windows 8. I had transferred all the files from the Compaq laptop to the Dell and put them in a folder and forgotten about them. I ran onto them today. So I decided to add some stories that I had in that folder. 

Two historical documents on Salmon Gee. Click hereAnd Here

Also a History on Cyrene Standley Merrill written by two of her granddaughters, one of which was my grandmother Mary Ellen Kerr Gee.

There are more to come, but I ran out of time.

The link is Here.  

Thursday, August 1, 2013

New postings on Family Tree


Orlando Gee: My cousin Janet Pollei wrote to inform me that there was a photo which was place on Orlando’s record that was upside down.  As long as I was on his record, I added a Story and I have a long history that I will have to dig out of the archives.

I also wrote an e-mail to the individual who submitted the photo asking him to put it in correctly.

Geneva Marie Gee:  I have been looking at the records for the descendants of Erastus Rowe Gee.  I found that I had information that had not been added to her record. I added a photo and Obituary

Winfield Cray a descendant of Solomon Gee Jr.
Added Photo

I added a Source to Johann Altgelt LH67-R71 (1523-1581). There is also another record of a Johann Altgelt, but I cannot combine them, because they do not show up as duplicates.  I will leave this alone.  The ordinance work has been accomplished for this Johann, but not for the other.  There is also some contact information from a patron that added information (Benn-Wilde) renbewilde@yahoo.com  I will see if this is a valid address. 

Here is another surname (Altgelt) to add to the index.

 



Friday, July 26, 2013

More Additions

This week I have been actively adding information to my Price, Butler, Bailey and More website. Click Here.
Particularly to the Reed Page

I also put some of these documents as Stories on Family Tree. Some of them are in PDF format with photos, so they do not go over to Family Tree unless they are put as a link in Sources, which I have not done.  Perhaps some day that will be accomplished.

I have also added a history of Nancy Jane Rawlins Kerr by her granddaughter Marie Danielson Benson to Family Tree, which you will find at this link.

I merged a duplicate of Nancy Jane Rawlins Kerr and noted that there is another duplicate, but when you click on the name, it comes up Julia Rawlins with some of Nancy Jane's information. I earlier put a discussion on this record as follows:

From the history of the mother Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins we read: Mary Ellen and Joseph Rawlins were the parents of three children; Their oldest daughter, Nancy Jane, was very helpful to her parents. She was married in 1859 to Robert Marion Kerr, and moved to Cache Valley where they became the parents of nine children. She died September 18, 1928, at the age of 83. Helen, who was a baby when her parents left to come west with the pioneers died at the age of thirteen, while her mother was visiting Nancy Jane at the birth of her first child. In the Mormon overland Trail record she is listed as Mary Ellen Rawlins. Further research will be done to document this record, but for the meantime we will stick with the name that is found in a contemporary record. There are probably other contemporary records which will document her name to be Mary Ellen rather than Helen. This history does not document this child [Julia] as a member of the family, The fact that the sealing to parents was done in 1993 further mitigates against the assumption that she was a child of these parents. 

My brother Martell is going to the Gee reunion in Conneaut, Ohio next Saturday.  I printed out a descendancy chart of Solomon Gee [9 generations] with notes for him to take to interested people ther as well as a photo of Zopher Gee junior. 

I have received some documents and photos from Thomas Cray and his cousin.  He is a descendant of Mary (Molly) Gee and her husband Webber Reed. Mary comes through Solomon, Solomon Jr., Leuman, and then Mary.  The family went up to Canada from Marlow, New Hampshire and then down to Iowa where Thomas Cray now lives.

Alice got an e-mail from one of the former members of our ward, who reported that her son-in-law had a Gee connection.  I have written to obtain further clarification. She comes from the Benson family, so I will send her the information about my connection to the Benson family. I wrote this up some time ago and give you a link to the Adventure.

Amber Thomas Galli, Glendon's granddaughter has contacted me and I have given her some information and links to the websites and this blog.

Matthew Marshall, my grandson, has gotten a job in Connecticut and wrote wondering where the Gees lived in Connecticut, I sent him a history of Solomon Gee.

My neighbor is an avid genealogist and wrote me with the following concern.  He has a number of type script histories and wondered how he could put them into Family Tree.  I suggested that he scan them in and then us an Optical Character Recognition software to convert the typescript to text, then edit it in a word processing program.  I use Abby Fine Reader which I got free with my scanner.  I found it on special on the Abby site for $29.99 (about half price).  The professional version is $200+.  I then transfer the blocked transcribed version to Microsoft Word and then look for mistranslations and errors.  I can then use the Word document or print it as a PDF file.  I usually send PDF files to people, because that is the best way to transport across multiple computer platforms.

I have had requests for the Power Point presentation that I did at the Gee family reunion in Heber.  Since I knew all the stories, I did not include them in the slides.  I am in the process of adding those stories, at least a shortened version to the Power Point and then include a link to the document posted in Family Tree Stories.   

And so it goes.
 
 

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

The Deborah Huntley Dillema

In my last post, I cleaned up my 6th great grandfather Solomon Gee.  When I looked at the record he was married to Hannah Huntley, Deborah Huntley's sister.  This will document what I did to correct that mistake.

Click Here for another Adventure 

There is more work to be done.  I will keep you informed of the progress.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Merging Solomon


Today I was looking to see if any stories had been placed on Solomon Gee’s record in Family Tree.  I found one and added another.  As is my custom, I checked to see if there were any duplicate records.  I found 12 duplicates.  In order to document the PIN numbers of the duplicates and my work, I have taken screen shots of each of the merges. You can find the link on Merging Solomon here. Also you can find the link to the story I placed on Solomon's record Here.  

I am working on more extensive documentation to add which I am taking from Charles E. Benjamin's book.  I will let you know when this occurs. 

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Another Kerr Post

I have been adding Stories and here is another on Arvilla Johnson Heyer 1st Cousin 2 times removed.  She may not be familiar, but she is the daughter of Ella Annette Kerr and granddaughter of Robert Marion Kerr. This history comes from the Kerr family Newsletter.

 I also did some work in correcting the records in Family Tree.  I wrote it up as another Adventure In family Tree  Click Here

I will continue to work on Mary Ellen Frost Rawlins record.  It will take some time.  I hope you will be patient.

Friday, July 5, 2013

A Few Kerr Posts

Here are today's offerings for the Kerr line.


Story

A clipping from the Deseret News


Robert Marion Kerr

You would think I would run out of material, but there is more to come.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Adding More Stories


I was cleaning out some files and ran into some histories that I had previously entered into digital format from scanning in the original and doing optical character recognition, since I find this easier than typing them in.  Now that we have Family Tree stories, I put them into their records. The source for these stories was the Robert Marion Kerr Family Newsletter.  There were photos in the newsletter, but they were Xerox copies and not true gray scale, so I will wait for someone who has better photos to add them to the records.


Larae Kerr Skeen Fonnesbeck First Cousin Twice removed


Nancy Olive Kerr Harris great Grand Aunt


John Andrew Kerr great Grand Uncle

Robert Marion Kerr great great Grandfather 

William Jasper Kerr  great Grand Uncle

Stay tuned, there may be more to come.


Monday, July 1, 2013

Something New

I wanted to index the posts on my blog.  I noted that my son John had an index on his blog, so I asked him how to do it.  This is the result.  If you click on a name, you will see all the posts that contain information on that name.

Friday, June 28, 2013

A murderer in the family?


On April 4th 2013, I posted a link to the history of “Old Uncle” Salmon Gee Jr.  I prepared a story in addition to the one that I posted on Family Tree for the cousins reunion at the Heber Valley Camp.  I ran out of time, so I did not present it, but it is still an interesting story. So I have posted it on his stories and send you a teaser.

Salmon Jr. was born in Madison, Ashtabula, Ohio in 1830, and two years before his parents joined the church.  He is listed in the census with his parents, but not much is known about him and his movements.  He is not listed in the Overland Trail database and we do not know how and when he came to Utah.  There is a record in the newspapers about his involvement with a murder in Bingham, Utah.  A man by the name of “Sod” Butcher was accused of the murder of three men by the name of Cotton. Salmon was accused of complicity in the murder.  His older brother Lysander Gee defended him.  He was found not guilty.  This story is found on the William Hickman (Wild Bill) website.  Wild Bill Hickman died in a hotel in Lander, Wyoming probably of an intestinal infection and is buried up Squaw Creek.  You may find the Link to this story Here.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Kerrs Again

Yesterday I posted the obituaries of John W. Clifford on his record in Family Tree and my wife Alice found an obituary for Robert Marion Kerr (Bob) so I posted that with a photo that I found on the Internet.  John (Jack) was the husband of Coral Kerr the daughter of Robert (grandmother Gee's brother) and Annie Spori Kerr and Bob was their son. I did not know that he had died.  Coral is still alive so I will have to get a photo for Jack's record from her.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

The many wives of Cullen Pridgen

I have been helping my wife with her Family Tree.  I wrote up a little Adventure.  You can view it Here.

This was the most challenging adventure I have encountered.

I suppose there will be more ahead.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Stuck on the Stuckis


I have been blogging mostly about my father's side of my family. I also have been working on the maternal side as well. This post will be about a document that I have had in my possession for quite a number of years. I initially tried to enter the data into a PAF file, but did not understand the relationships, so I put it aside. The document concerned the distribution of money to heirs of a widow in Switzerland. My mother and her siblings received a small amount of money. Thus the document was found in my parents file cabinet and came into my possession.

Since my great grandfather was dead as well as my grandfather Stucki, the inheritance fell to my mother and her living siblings as the remaining heirs.

Eliza Stucki, my great grandfather Stucki's sister and her son were also named in the document.

Eliza and her son Fred (Frederick) have a history in the book John Ulrich Stucki and his descendants. The birth dates were the same in both documents so I knew we had the same people. I added the history of Elisa and Fred as stories to their records.

Fred was born to an unmarried mother in Colmar Alsace Loraine and was later sealed to his grandparents posthumously.  In his patriarchal blessing the name of his biological father was named.  In Family Tree this name is missing and his grandparents are listed as his parents. This needs to be changed to reflect the real parents. I added the following as a discussion on Fred’s record.

This is a duplicate of K2HJ-Q8M and cannot be merged at this time. He was the illegitimate son of Elise Stucki and came to America with his mother. He was in the war and suffered "shell shock" and was hospitalized in the Veterans Hospital in American Lake, Washington and died there. He never married as far as I am aware.

I also added the following as discussion: Fred, her son, was born February 14, 1890, in Colmar, Alsace Lorraine, France/Germany[1]. Eliza never married, Fred's Patriarchal Blessing given in Paris, Idaho, December 23, 1898, by Patriarch Hugh Findaly lists his birthplace as Colmar, Alsace Lorraine, Germany, and his father as Jacob Thorni Stucki.

I also found Fred in the 1910, 1930 and 1940 US census and added these as sources to his record.

I need to remove the marriage of Maria Elisa Stucki to Hans Konrad Lichti since this was only a sealing and occurred after the death of Hans and before the death of Elisa.  This will then open up the parentage of Fred to allow Jacob Thorni Stucki to be added as his father with the explanation that the parents were never married.

In looking for a logical match for Jacob/Jakob Stucki there was a Jakob Stucki born 17 May 1859 in Neunforn, Thurgau, Switzerland.  This will require a lot of research to determine if this is the correct Jakob.  This Jakob is not listed as having any spouse and the date of death is not found.

I do have poor photos of Elisa and Fred that I will add to Family Tree.  I hope that someone can come up with some better ones.

Fred has two records, which can only be merged by Family Search.  This is my next project.

There are many more records which can be edited and families combined with the information found in the document from the bank in Switzerland now that I know how to read it.




[1]  From Wikipedia:”Under the German Empire of 1871-1918, the territory constituted the Reichsland or Imperial Province of Elsass-Lothringen. The area was administered directly by the imperial government in Berlin and was granted some measure of autonomy in 1911. This included its constitution and state assembly, its own flag, and the Elsässisches Fahnenlied as its anthem.”

The region is now (2013) in France and has been since it was taken away from Germany after they lost World War II.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Following the leads


Following the leads

In my last blog I gave a link to an Adventure in Family Tree.  I still have not fully resolved the situation, but it led me to do some things that I will document here. 

I decided to find Ginny Chestnut as she was the daughter of Alyce, my uncle’s second wife.  I vaguely remembered her name, but on Alyce’s obituary she is listed as living in Redding, California.  Ginny was the product of Alyce’s first marriage.  I went to Dexknows.com and hoped that I would find a phone number for her.  I was successful in my search and placed my call.  All I got was a voice mail.  I usually do not leave a message when calling people that I do not know, but in this case I did.  Ginny has a photography business, so when she got my voice mail she returned my call.  I introduced myself and she remembered my parents and my uncles and aunts.  I asked her if she knew of any one in her family by the name of Amy Lynn Schmidt and she responded that she did not know of any one by that name. 

We talked for a while and I got some information from her.  Alyce, her mother, was a product of a marriage that had ten children.  The mother (Gertrude) died 2 months after the death of her tenth child of a ruptured appendix and gall bladder.  Ginny also gave me her e-mail address so that we could correspond.  She also told me that all of Alyce’s siblings were dead. In addition she told me that the parents were born in Sweden and were of the servant class and that their name was Benard or Bernard or some other Swedish variant. 

Armed with this information, I decided to do a little searching of the records.  In the census records, I found August as a single young man in the household of William Nicholson in the 1900 census living in Nebraska where he is listed a Benard.  I found a marriage record in the Nebraska marriages where he is listed as Nels August Bernard.  If you do a search on one spelling of the name, you may not find who you are searching for.  Thus in my earlier searches I missed the record where he was listed as a single 19 year old, because I searched on Bernard.

From the marriage record, I learned that Gertrude Bernard’s maiden name was Johnson and she was born in Sweden.  In the 1920 census we find NA Bernard with his wife Gertrude and six children listed; Herbert, Hazel, Fern(e), Francis, Dorothy and Harold.  In the 1940 census only August is listed, because Gertrude died in 1923.  He was living in Omaha, Nebraska at the time, but in 1935 he was still in Rural, Knox, Nebraska and listed a N A Bernard. The children were not in the home.  I then looked for each of the children.  I found Ferne Bernard in the Social Security Death Index, I found Dorothy Benard in the 1940 census living with Carmen, Alice (note the spelling) and Herbert living in Omaha, Nebraska. From this information I was able to calculate approximate birth years for each of the children.  I still only had eight of the ten children.  I will have to ask Ginny who the others were.  I entered all the information in my descendants of Lysander Gee database.  From here I can move them to any database that I wish.

In my e-mail correspondence with Ginny I decided to share some histories that I had on my computer of my uncle Vernon.  I had one written by his brother Merrill and also one written by his mother. In addition I had histories of each of Vernon’s brothers written by their mother and I sent them as well.  Inasmuch as these histories were not posted as Stories on Family Tree, I added them to Family Tree.

This is not the end of the story.  Ginny told me that she had a cookbook with family history that she would share with me, but she was selling the family home and moving and that it might be some time before she could do that.

Stay tuned for further developments.


Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The case of the misplaced PIN

In my last post I commiserated with you about a problem that I had with a contributor to the ordinances for my uncles second wife. I wrote it up as an adventure in Family Tree.

Click Here for the Link

Friday, May 3, 2013

Every day a new thing to learn


I was looking at a record of my uncle’s second wife Alyce Virginian Bernard Chestnut Gee PIN LCRJ-THR.  She appeared as an “Opportunities” on my Temple tab.  Then in about a week it was gone.  I went to her record and found that someone had reserved her work to be done.  I did not reserve her work, because she had living children and was born after 1910. When I looked to see who had reserved the work, there was no name listed, only a PIN. · Contact Name MMVD-VT9.  I had never seen only a PIN number listed as a contributor.  Usually there is a name iwth not contact information, but a number? I did not know what was happening in this case, so I wrote an e-mail to Family Search to shed some light on what was happening.

I was concerned, because she was never a member of the church and I was not aware that any of her children were members of the church. Her baptism and confirmation were completed on 29 April in the Salt Lake temple and the individual temple ordinances were reserved, but not printed. The sealing to my uncle Vernon was Printed
30 April 2013
Reserved by MMVD-VT9
Shared with the Temple System
 
I asked Family Search Support, Could you please explain to me what is happening here? We will see what they respond.

If you can't do it, somone can

As you might remember, in my last post I ran across a duplicate record for my grandmother's sister Alta.  In trying to merge the two, I noted a warning that the records could not be merged at this time.  Today I received the following e-mail: 
"Dear Ivin Laurence Gee,
The duplicate membership record for Alta Anetta /Kerr/ will soon no longer appear in NewFamily Search.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Data Administration"


If you have the correct information and documentation things can be changed in Family Tree. Unless we change it, it will not be changed.  

Friday, April 26, 2013

More Not a Match and matches in Family Tree

I am still looking into the records and finding merging and correcting that needs to be done including records that ate not a match.  For another Adventure in Family Tree click here.

The information in this adventure is how I found some possible duplicates for my grandmother Mary Ellen Kerr Gee and her sister Alta. I was able to find records that did not match and some that required permission to merge.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Look what e-mail can bring






I received an e-mail from Judy Wolven (someone that I had never heard of before) inquiring about Solomon Gee.  She found my e-mail address from a post that I had placed on a Genealogy Bulletin Board a few years ago.  She was trying to connect her line with Solomon. She wrote as follows:



"Hello Laurence:



While searching for a place to read a copy of the book on Solomon Gee, I stumbled on your latest post at geneology.com.  I attempted to register so I could contact you, but am still waiting for my log in and password to be emailed to me.  I hope you don't mind that I emailed you directly, and I hope you have some information that could help me confirm what I've found about my link to Solomon.

I am the great-great granddaughter of Mary Gee, who married William Aldrich in Drummondville, Quebec on Feb. 28, 1828.  Witnesses to their marriage were a Solomon and Mary Gee.  The Aldrich family left Canada to settle in Ripton, VT circa 1860.
Solomon Gee also settled in Ripton, VT, and the records indicate he was born 1786 in Marlow NH, which would make him the son of Lewman, b. 1759 in Lyme, CT, the son of Solomon II, b. 1736."



I was strapped for time, but I do not like to let someone wait for an answer so I responded with: "I will look into this and get back to you this weekend."



It was over a week before I was able to respond. Finally I had some time and did some massaging of my database of descendants of Solomon Gee of Lyme Connecticut and sent her three generations of descendants of Solomon Gee II plus some additional information that I gathered from the Internet.



As I was rereading the information that I sent, I thought that the history of Solomon Gee II that I had and the short information on his wife Martha Bingham would be something that I could put into Family Tree Stories.  Some of the information is from the book, but some is from information gathered from e-mail correspondents over the past 9 years.



I copied the history and pasted into Stories in Family Tree. This has made this information that I have available to all of Solomon’s descendants, many of whom do not have access to the book or the resources that I have.  I will have to go through the book and extract the histories, if they are appropriate and enter them into Family Tree.



If you wish to see what I entered, Solomon Gee’s PIN is LZPP-GVP and Martha’s is LZD7-W9P



While I was at it, I found that I had placed a link to the Grave Marker of Martha Bingham in the discussions.  I deleted that and put the link in sources.  I also noted that there was no link to the grave marker of her husband Solomon Jr., so I added that as a source to his record.  I checked to see if there were any duplicates for Solomon and the program listed two.  Both were named Greer born in Groton Massachusetts, so I marked them as not a duplicate, so that someone else would not, in their zeal, merge them inappropriately.

Thus we have another Adventure in Family Tree.