A friend of mine just called to say he saw my picture in the paper. I was more surprised than he was! I remember now that I was asked to make a presentation at the Ludlow (MA) Senior Center a few months ago. I knew I had made the commitment, but clearly, I forgot that it was so close...August 8...or maybe the 9th??? I better call the activities director It's agood thing Bob called!
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We had a great time last night. Week 3 covered a lot of ground including becoming a detective while reading census records, soundex calculations and some free family tree software called "Family Tree Builder".
We started out with a slide of one of those "jokes" where all the letters of every word are jumbled other that the first and last letter. There were 4 paragraphs. When the slide came up, at first everyone just stared. Then after a few seconds, a couple of people started to be able to make out the first few words. As others joined in, reading the jumbled words became easier. By the end, everyone was reading aloud. It was a lesson in being broadminded with the spelling of family names in the records we find or with how you search for records in the first place. Here's the reading:
"I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to arscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitllraed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!"
Next was the 1930 census that showed my grandfather's family. There are 2 interesting things here: 1) It showed his mother, who lived in Canada, as a resident in his household in Springfield, MA. Previously, I thought her husband died in the mid 1930's but could never find an actual date. But the 1930 census listed her as a widow. Thus, I now knew that he had died in the 1920's and I was able to redirect my searches. Well, that was over 10 years ago when "searching" was a little more challenging, but the info was very helpful at the time. 2) There was a boarder in the household whose occupation was "painter". Although he was married, his wife wasn't with him. While this is pure speculation, I wove a story about this being the the Depression Era and Charlie, the boarder, was probably a friend of my grandfather who found work in Springfield and lived there until the work ran out. Not necessarily fact, but a good story line!
Soundex codes! Everyone now knows what they are, why they were developed and how to use them. Even though no one REALLY needs to know how to calculate them, that's what we learned last night. The reason I felt this was important is so that a new genealogy researcher will now enough to use Soundex as a tool and what to expect for results. Virtually all genealogy web search sites will offer the option to filter using Soundex.
Finally, "dit" names..... Now there's a challenge to someone searching French-Canadian ancestry!
One of the biggest mistakes made by someone getting started in their family research is failing to recognize alternative spellings of a family name. I should know....I'm one of them! From a very young age, I thought the name "Robison" was special somehow. I don't know how, I just thought that it was. There were no other families around by that name and since I had no knowledge of the large family in Alabama and Tennessee that I would meet years later I was convinced of the uniqueness! There were certainly "Robinson" families and "Robertson". So it was probably natural that I felt that if the name wasn’t spelled the way we spelled it, they couldn't possibly be related to us, and that was that!
I knew I had a grandfather in Alabama named Cecil Lee Robison, or "Papa Lee" to some of the family "back home". But I never met him, I never talked to him, I never even saw a picture of him. Again, as a kid, I figured it "Papa Lee" in Alabama and the 4 of us in Massachusetts! But when it came time to start digging around (figuratively!) I had nearly resigned myself to the fact that there were hardly enough of us to bother with. I should work on my mother's side.
My father was born in Evergreen, Alabama but didn't spend very much time there...long story! So I wrote a letter to the Conecuh County Historical Society inquiring about the remote possibility that there might be a Robison or 2 left in state. The historian (whose name escapes me now) wrote back to advise me that one of their elderly residents had been researching families in that area for years. She gave me Mrs. Sarah R Coker's address and assured me that she could help. The letter went out in the mail, yes, an old fashioned letter with a stamp and everything! About a week or so later, Mrs. Coker responded! To make a long story short, Mrs. Coker turned out to be my great aunt, the younger sister to my grandfather, "Papa Lee". It turns out that she had mountains of family research, all the way back to the Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, and the Civil War....or rather...The War of Northern Aggression, as she put it!
The point here being that my family is rife with Robison's, Robinson's, Robertson's, Robeson's, Roberson's...all over the southeast United States, Texas, California...you name it! Had I eye opened my eyes, I might have found them, but Aunt Sarah had already done the work! And without any computers.
The lesson is simple. If your name is "Page", look at "Paige" as well. If your name is "Cowan", look at "Cowin" and "Cowen" and maybe even "Cohan" and "Cohen". Translations create an even wider issue: Is it "Lefebvre" or "Smith"; "Laframboise" or "Strawberry"; DuBois" or "Woods"...and the list goes on!!
