What Genealogy-Related Wishes are on Your Holiday 2020 Wishlist?

It looks like the administrator for this group is inactive on LibraryThing so I decided to include a prompt to create activity on this group.

What genealogy-related wishes are on your Holiday 2019 wishlist? (Oops, I put 2020 at the top and cannot edit the thread title.) These can be books, other merchandise, or even an answer to a research question.

I must confess my main genealogy-related wish is time to research on my own family. This fall has been a busy one for me, and time has been difficult to find. Although I will be researching for clients during the holidays, I'm hopeful I'll have time to devote to my own research. I'd like to write several sketches.

While several genealogy books are on my wish list, I only placed Mississippians in the Great War: Selected Letters by Anne Lipscomb Webster, retired librarian with Mississippi Department of Archives and History, on my Christmas list for family members.

My number one wish would be to have more years left to research or at least more hours in the day and more energy. I'm busy trying to tidy up my research in case someone else wants to continue it.

My second wish is to find out what happened to my great-grandfather who disappeared in the 1890s. Just a couple days ago I found something my grandmother had written to a large newspaper trying to find him. She said he was tall, had sandy hair and blue eyes. That was all new information to me.

>2 Taphophile13: Those newspapers can hold "gems" of information about our ancestors. Earlier this year I found an article about winners at the county fair for different categories. Great-grandmothers on both sides won different categories, and in one category, my mother's paternal grandmother won 1st prize and my dad's paternal grandmother won 2nd prize. I guess I come from a great line of cooks on both sides!

>3 thornton37814:, I love finds like that, where you see ancestors crossing each other's paths, having no idea that someday they will have a common descendant.

A local group home in the 1970s simultaneously housed my great grandfather on my dad's side, and a very distant cousin of hers who wound up there by chance. Surely too distantly related to have known it at the time.

I want my kids to renew my membership on Ancestry for Christmas.
>1 thornton37814: Thanks for doing this.

>4 Cecrow: That's interesting. In doing descendant research, I often find distant cousins who spent time in group homes of various sorts. I try to dig as much as possible to uncover their story. These discoveries make for interesting research. However, I keep in mind the distance from the common ancestor so I do not bog myself down too much. I may still add things to a "to do list" for future research in case I visit the area.

>5 mnleona: I hope your children do so. You're welcome! I have another question for closer to New Year's, but I hope others will continue to post here.

I want to figure out my "man of mystery" 2nd-great grandfather. He shows up in 1875 in Missouri to marry my 2nd-great grandmother, being at least 21 at the time (or lying on his marriage license). He's in the 1880 Census, and then dies in 1884 after being thrown from a horse. Various records give him three different birth years and places of birth. No death certificate, of course, and the obit is useless.

I can get farther back on every other line, so I find him to be particularly annoying.

>7 casvelyn: I wish you the best of luck. Any clues from his neighbors in tax lists or the census? The bondsman? Just thinking out loud here.

>8 thornton37814: All I've ever found on him is a couple mentions in the newspaper because he attended Grange meetings. There are other people in the area from the same states where he may or may not be from, but nothing conclusive. I don't think I've looked at tax lists specifically though, so I should go see if they're on Family Search at some point.

Thanks for activating this group again, Lori.

My main holiday wish for my genealogy is more time to delve deeper into my own family history. That includes time to actually play with the DNA tools available so I get a better grasp on what they can do and if they can help me with the research on my family.

>10 Familyhistorian: Speaking of DNA tools, National Genealogical Society announced the availability of a home study course developed by Angie Bush. If anyone is interested, information can be found on NGS' web site.

>11 thornton37814: I had a look at the course, Lori. It looks interesting.

>12 Familyhistorian: Yes. I think it's a good option for many who really can't attend institutes.

Is anyone here familiar with the books of Nathan Dylan Goodwin? Somewhere I picked up his name as an author of genealogy-themed mysteries, but haven't read about him on LT.

>14 kac522: I read the first in the series. I enjoyed the genealogical research angles, but the genealogist seemed to violate professional ethical codes. It was a promising start but seemed to rely quite a bit on "coincidence." The ratings seem to improve as the series goes along. I just never got around to reading the second installment.

I don't really have time to do much research. However, I do intend to change that in 2021 when I retire. Until then, I will reap nuggets from you guys!

>16 Tess_W: Do you have a count down to retirement clock yet, Tess?

>17 Familyhistorian: Last month of teaching is May, 2021!

As 2019 draws to a close, what has been your best find of the year? What are your goals for 2020?

Best find of 2019:
Confirmation that Thomas Duke, father of Berniece Estelle Duke Thornton of Monroe County, Mississippi, is the son of Benjamin of Nansemond County, Virginia. (There was one other Benjamin in Virginia who might have been his father (although it wasn't quite as good of a fit), but I found documents confirming the Nansemond County suspicion I've had since the 1990s.

2020 goals:
1) Preparing new presentations for NGS and other conferences.
2) Chip away at finding birth parents of Daniel Phillips who married Elizabeth Anglin in 1860 in Monroe County, Mississippi. Part of this will involve work on his daughter's lines. atDNA will be important.
3) Investigate the alleged murder of Keziah Mosely Thomas (sister of an ancestor). Others have told me a story which has yet to be verified. Newspapers for the time are not extant. I need to make a trip to investigate criminal court documents and minutes for the era (unless they miraculously appear online) and also to explore the files of a county historian who might have recorded the story in some of the columns he wrote. I really just want to uncover the truth. The family story has an "embellished" feel to it.

I'm trying to be realistic, listing only 3 goals, but I'm sure I'll work on others as time permits.

My legit best find of the year was finding the "kerkelijke registers" (church registers) for the Catholic church in Kersbeek-Miskom, Brabant, Belgium, on Family Search. One branch of my family is from that area, and unlike the civil records, these are in Latin so I can read them. (The family spoke Dutch and French, and I don't read Dutch at all and French only a little.) I was able to prove that Albertine Veulemans' parents were Jean Francois Veulemans and Theresia Maria (or Maria Theresia) Van den Poel. I also found all the children Jean Francois and Theresia Maria had before they moved to the United States. I also found Jean Francois' and Theresia Maria's parents, which puts me back into the late 1700s on that line.

I'm not sure if this is really the best discovery, but finding that two of my distant cousins both committed murder and spent time in state prison in the early 20th century was certainly among my more interesting finds. One murdered his wife in a fit of drunken rage, was sentenced to life in prison, but was pardoned about 10 years later and promptly moved to Kansas. He remarried there, and based on some circumstantial evidence, I don't think he ever told his second wife about his past. The other suffered what was probably a traumatic brain injury after being hit by a streetcar, developed paranoid delusions, and later murdered his neighbor. He spent the rest of his life in the state hospital for the criminally insane.

In 2020, I'm hoping to get through more of the Belgian church records. The families are intermingled and the handwriting is bad, so I'm essentially indexing them as I go through page by page. I'd also like to figure out why Albertine Veulemans is not with her parents in the ship's passenger lists when they came to the US from Belgium. (She was the sole heir of her aunt and uncle who never had children, and they refer to her as their adopted daughter, so I suspect she may have actually lived with them and not just been adopted as an heir, but this is all conjecture.)

I'm also going to continue my Steffey/Steffy/Myers/Sechrest/Secrest/Downey/Wampler hot mess of intermarriage spanning 150 years and three states. I can't even begin to explain these people, the lines are such a mess. I had to break them out into their own tree because it was getting into "I'm my own grandpa" territory. But someday I will know how they are all connected!

If I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll continue my work on John Whittaker, my Missouri Man of Mystery. He did not just appear out of nowhere in 1875 as a full grown man.

And don't even get me started on my 2020 work goals. The downside to being a genealogy librarian is that you never want to spend your free time working on your own family. :)

>20 casvelyn: Same thing with professional genealogists. That's why I'm trying to be realistic!

>21 thornton37814: And after all the working and genealogy-ing, how are we supposed to find time to read?!?!?!

>20 casvelyn: Interesting. I came across the Wampler name earlier this year when two potential DNA matches showed up on 23andMe. I had never heard of the name before and have no idea how they might be related.

My best "find" was sharing a picture with a "new" distant relative. Early last year I found a distant Minnick relative living in New Jersey. This man is descended from my g-g-grandmother's brother, William Minnick. William Minnick was the first police marshal of South Amboy, NJ, circa 1900. My new cousin and I exchanged information, and then I vaguely remembered that years ago I had seen a picture of a policeman among my aunt's photographs, but she could not identify who it was.

In November I was able to visit my aunt and she pulled out loads of pictures, and within 10 minutes I found the policeman's photo, with "Billie Minnick" written on the back. Bingo! I sent a scan of the photo to my new distant cousin and he was elated. He had never seen a picture of his great grandfather. As it happens, he had seen this very same picture on the website of the Archives of the South Amboy Police Department, although the photograph was unidentified.

So I feel like I done good!

>23 Taphophile13: Interesting! I have no idea how most of my Wamplers are related either lol! Mine are from either Germany or Switzerland, moved to Virginia, and then to Indiana.

>23 Taphophile13: >25 casvelyn: Now you all have me singing the advertising jingle, "Make your sausage always Wampler's . . ." (I think it is an East Tennessee brand.)

>26 thornton37814: LOL!

>25 casvelyn: >26 thornton37814: So the clues are Germany/Switzerland, sausage and Tennessee. Hmm, nothing fits. Keep on searching.

>28 Taphophile13: Have you color-coded your identified DNA matches by grandparent? If so, look at the "In common with" matches and see if you spot a recognizable pattern. You may occasionally have an in common with match who shares with you and the other match on a different line, but many times, it's easy to spot the pattern and then trace the probable line. For example, I might have found a match that matches my Grandmother (Hester/Harris) in common withs. I might then see, the in common withs seem to all be on the Harris/Mosely branch. I might then see they match the Mosely/Murry branch. This helps eliminate lots of other lines in identifying the probable match. I often research that other person's tree to see if I come to the same conclusions. I often focus on a branch I think is most likely to yield results. For example, a branch that is in a known geographic area in which my ancestors resided. Not sure if I'm helping you or not, but I'm just trying to give you ideas for finding the common ancestors.

>29 thornton37814: Yes, I find color-coding both helpful and attractive. I also use DNA painter which sometimes points out possible connections. Based on the "in common with" a maternal 3rd cousin, I think the Wamplers may be related to my maternal grandmother's side. I just went back to 23andMe to see if I could find any more info and guess what. One of the Wamplers gives the birthplaces of his grandparents: all in Tennessee.

Another lead. Just checked my tree and a 5th cousin once removed moved from NJ to TN. A 1C3R also moved there but died at 19 so I doubt he had much time to establish a family. At least some of it is beginning to fit now and I have a new research project for the new year. Yea!

>30 Taphophile13: I had a friend who lived in the greater Cincinnati area when I did whose maiden surname was Wampler. Her daddy lived down near Cleveland which is in Bradley County, but I think the sausage place is more in the Sweetwater/Athens area so somewhere around McMinn/Monroe/Meigs counties.

>31 thornton37814: Thanks for all the info. I may figure this out yet.

>32 Taphophile13: I hope so!

Just after New Year's, I visited a great-aunt and found the first photo I've ever seen of one of my great-great-grandmothers. Unfortunately, there's two women in the photo and we don't know which one is her, lol. That's still a win, just with a footnote.

This morning I began reading Generations and Change: Genealogical Perspectives in Social History edited by Robert M. Taylor, Jr. and Ralph S. Crandall. I read the preface and chapter 1, "Historians and Genealogists: An Emerging Community of Interest," an essay written by the editors. It mentioned some articles written in the 1930s about genealogical fiction. I plan to locate those articles to read and glean ideas of older books I might wish to read! 11 or 12 articles cited in the essay earned a place on my "to read" list. This book was recommended in a Facebook post by Elizabeth Shown Mills a couple years ago. I ordered a used copy and just never got around to reading the book. It's at the top of this year's genealogy reading list so I began it today. If I read a chapter a day, I'll be done around January 21 or 22. I may read more than a chapter sometimes.

I haven't yet posted my 2019 genealogy find. It was on my US line which I had been ignoring for years as most of my family lines come from the UK and those are the ones I am interested in. I had the US family line back to the birth of Charles Tripp in 1761 in Duchess County, New York and that was pretty solid because it came from his statement in his pension records, a pension he received for his service in the War of Independence or, as we call it here, the American Revolution.

So, just before I was going on vacation/research trip, I put that info on the Tripp Genealogy site and thought no more of it. That was, until they sent me back a well reasoned argument that took that line back to Portsmouth, RI and further back to the original Tripp who emigrated from Horkstow, Lincolnshire to Boston around 1630. Well, I guess that makes the Tripps another UK family line, doesn't it?

>36 Familyhistorian: That's great, Meg! Hope you find lots of documents to go with that line and breakthrough on another.

>37 thornton37814: It was pretty amazing, Lori, and there were documents that I was able to access through Family Search that took the line back to 1598.

My goal for this year is to enter two boxfuls of my mom’s genealogy books into LT! I inherited them many years ago, but they’ve been in storage since then, and just now surfaced.

I also hope to get new guidance from the Ancestry.com Thrulines feature; it has already put a dent in one of my brick walls.

>38 Familyhistorian: That's really great!

>39 staffordcastle: It always helps to know exactly which books we own in our own collections. ThruLines is great, but I use it with caution. I worked with some of the ThruLines for one ancestor. I suspected I knew who her father was and needed a little more confirmation and then needed to know who this man's father was. I knew she was born in Georgia and lived in Tennessee and Alabama. I'd identified a man living in proximity to the man who became her husband I believe to be her father. ThruLines connected me to a family who ended up in Indiana. The people on that line connected their line to a man who immigrated to Pennsylvania. When I began examining their research, I did not find the connection to the man. I found another same name man in the general area, but I could not attach their man to that man. I think they were using the other man, who died the same year they stated and in that same county, to the other individual. I never identified an ancestor for their lines, but I continue to work on it when I get time. I guess the moral of the story is that the success of using Thrulines depends upon the quality of the research underlying them.

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