Getting Ahead of Myself

I've finally started to really understand the software I use, The Master Genealogist. Joining the local users group really helped. They have a lot of great resources that are good even if you're not local. So, now I'm excited to do entry. Which also means searches.

I entered a lot of census records for the Mann branch of the family. Then I remember, that I have a copy of a marriage certificate for John Mackintosh and Mary Ann Steel in England. I think I forgot to post about that. From that information I have their father's names - Peter and Benjamin, respectively. And, a wedding date and some ages. Oh, and both of the father's are farmers.

From there, I had to start doing a bunch of searches at Ancestry.com. I booked marked a series of Benjamin Steele's that looked like the right family, until I realized something was off and that couldn't be them. Then, I found a replacement candidate that looked great, until I realized the birthday's are off. Which wouldn't've been so bad, except in my enthuiasm I made entries for 4 more family members based on these findings before realizing my mistake. At least I'd done a backup of my project before I started doing that entry so correcting the problem wasn't hard. And, I didn't order a birth certficate from England, for the wrong Mary Ann Steele, either.

More Mackintosh Birth Records; house keeping

Today I found Archie and Newton Mackintosh's birth records in Canada's. These are the brothers to Isabella who was mentioned in an earlier post. Newton is my grandfather's father. As usual, the recorders of this information didn't see fit to provide me with all the specific clues I want to trace the family backwards. The nerve! Basically, I didn't expect, but would have liked to have seen a birth place for John Mackintosh listed.

I found Archie fairly easily, but Newton was a bit of a problem. The trick was somewhere along the lines I'd told Ancestry only to display 4 star or better matches and the record was rated with 3 stars. I'd almost missed what I'd done.

There are no startling revelations here. Probably just as well. But, it was nice to make some progress, as I'd spent a few hours earlier today and a few hours in the previous week restarting a database for the family with information properly attributed and documented as best as I can at this point. To clean up past messes where I copied information from websites that I later realized made no sense, but now have no easy way to fix it. If I'd attributed properly, I could have done a search of everything that had a source matching the problem data and cleaned it up that way. Live and learn. It's a little tedious to recreate what has already been done and a little hard to keep track of what I have and haven't done, but the pay off will be there. At least hypothetically.

Mining Case Law?

After some random google searches, I thought I'd poke around and see what I found in the Google Book's project. After putting in Huntingdon and McCahan, I came across a link to a book of mining case law of all things. The defendants, in 1874, were John and Thomas S. McCahan. It would need to be verified, but given the time frame and location, it is not unreasonable to think this might be my grandmother's grandfather and his brother, or great-grandfather and his son. Given the multitude of John's, Mary's and Thomas' in the family I suppose it would not be prudent to assume anything, but it is something new to dig into.

http://books.google.com/books?id=_549AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA239&dq=mccahan+huntingdon&ie=ISO-8859-1#PPA239,M1

The link goes to a book called The Mining Reports, containing recent cases on the law of mines, Vol 16, by R. S. Morrison of the Colorado Bar, published in 1894.

Useful Links for May

I'll just add to this list instead of making separate blog entries.

• Enumeration Instructions
  from each census. This should be useful in interpreting the information on the form, because it shows how the gathers were instructed to gather the information.
  
• Terry's TMG Tips - a source tutorial
• Terrry's TMG Tips - managing census information, including links to other people's ideas on the same.
• Conversation on setting up census data in The Master Genealogist from the Wholly Gene's Support board - this discusses differences between Terry's method and a method from someone named Theresa as augmented by someone else named Betty including a download with Betty's method that has the images missing from versions found elsewhere online. Figuring out this whole census issue is hurdle I need to get past to start using TMG and inputting gathered data that hasn't been entered yet, and cleaning up what has.
  

Isabella Mackintosh Birth Record

Through Ancestry, I found a link to British birth records and if you were in the right time period you can order them online. Very cool. I'd found an index for Isabella Mackintosh, that looked like the right time period. She'd be my grandfather Mackintosh's Aunt. I didn't know what would be in the record, and was hoping they'd list place of birth of the father, but apparently not. This record matches the right time period for a census record I found that looked like the right family in York, England. We have photos from that time period of Mackintosh's in York. In the family history another relative compiled, Isabella's mother is shown with the surname Mackenzie (and father Alfred Mackenzie). This record says Mary Ann Mackintosh formerly Steele. So, there's a disconnect to sort out. Talking to my Mom says she remembers her Dad talking about the problem with surnames. So, I'm probably treading over old ground in the fun of sorting people out from the records left behind.

Here's a brief summary of the document:
It's a certified copy of an entry of birth, from 1880, registered in the subdistrict of Micklegate in the City and County of York (England). Isabella was born the 25th of January, 1880 at 6 Fenwick Street, St. Mary Bishophill (I think it says Bishhophill, I don't know what the next word is) then York. Her father was John Mackintosh and her mother was Mary Ann Mackintosh formerly Steele. John Mackintosh' occupation was as a railway engine fitter. Apparently the state saw no need to collect information on the mothers occupation.

Interestingly, the bottom of the certified copy contains the warning "A certificate is not evidence of identity."

Organizing my research

I haven't done much genealogy in years. The easy thing to do would be to blaim it on being a parent now, but that's not really the case. Mostly, I learned enough to know what I needed to go back and fix, but organizing is not fun! I had a family tree file that had lots of things I found on line in it. Which was fun, but then I progressed to wanting to have a file with just my research. And, in the mean time I collected documents without adding information to the file, because it would just be things I need to edit later. And, so the information is scattered.

I've been listening to some great podcasts on genealogy. Shamele Jordan's Genealogy on Demand is really motivating on the getting organized front. A lot of genealogy podcasts have been discussing how to share information, including using blogs as an informal way of sharing your research. I think it may be a good way to put a little "fun" into clean up. I can put up notes about what I'm filing, the people, and families, etc, and that might be an easy way to let other people in the family know what I'm doing.

Here are some links to my current favorite podcast's homepages:

• Genealogy on Demand
• The Genealogy Guys