Building a Family Tree: An Example on FamilySearch.org -- Project Eight: Part Two

You might want to start with Project Eight, Part One. I am continuing the analysis of the identity of my 5th Great-grandfather, James Bailey K2F2-84V. This post is another in the unending series of Projects I am doing to research different people in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. See the comment at the end of this post for a further explanation of the Projects.

After spending a considerable amount of time analyzing the entries surrounding James Bailey, I decided to go back and clean up his entry. Since I started working on this individual, he has apparently picked up a couple of "Watchers." This is an interesting by-product of working on a collaborative venue such as the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. I decided I might as well join the group and decided to watch James Bailey also. 

One interesting sidelight is that I was reminded that the history of the United Kingdom as a unified state can be treated as beginning in 1707 with the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, into a united kingdom called Great Britain, so technically, the term "United Kingdom" is not correct, it should be Great Britain and not the United Kingdom until the addition of Ireland pursuant to the Act of Union in 1800.

It is also apparent from the dates given to James Bailey above that the birthdate is an estimate, as it is noted in the notes to the entry. Assuming that the person was christened in his or her birth year is a usually safe assumption, but having the date there confuses the search engines and using the approximated birth date should be curtailed as much as possible. Adding the term "about" has been a standard genealogical practice for years, but again, is not a good idea from the standpoint of using online sources for research. I usually modify my search parameters to accommodate the approximations. 

As I mentioned previously, there are no supporting sources for the birthdate or the christening date. Likewise, there are also no supporting documents for the places. Sussex County in England adjoins Kent. Most of the documented places for this family are either in Kent or London. As I have further noted, picking up a "James Bailey" in Sussex at this time is a stretch. 

The connection between Rebecca Wallis, listed as his wife, and James Bailey is well supported. The main source is a marriage record of James Bailey and Rebecca Wallis in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Bermondsey, Surrey, England on 1 October 1798.

The notation on the record is that both of them are from that parish. The records show that Rebecca Wallis Bailey has a second husband and the marriage takes place in 1806. The implication is that her first husband, James Bailey, with whom she had one daughter, had died. Divorces were almost unknown in England at that time. There are no end to James Baileys in England about that time but, so far, support for the christening date of 29 September 1771 in Rotherhithe, Surrey, England has eluded me. However, I do find a James Bailey who died in Southwark St John Horsleydown, Surrey in 1803.

This looks like one of those end-of-line situations that has eluded the generations of my ancestors in their attempt to find this particular James Bailey. If looks like this one will be some time in solving.

Explanation of how this project began and why I am pursuing it.
In this project, I started out by picking a somewhat random person from my ancestors or my ancestors' descendants who lived in the 20th Century from the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and to hopefully show, step-by-step, the research needed to extend that person's family tree back several generations. In this particular case, I found a direct line ancestor to use as an example. Finding a person who has no apparent ancestors in the Family Tree is relatively easy for those who lived in or into the 20th Century by much harder the further you go back in the past. To clarify this project, I will not be reserving any of the people I discover for my own Temple List, unless, as in the case with this family, I am directly related to those I find. I will simply leave the "green icons" on the Family Tree for that person's descendants to find and use for themselves. Please refrain from doing the temple work for people to whom you are not related.

Now, after I got going doing the research, I got a couple of requests to research some people further back in time. These turned out to be old, established "end-of-line" situations. Since my original idea was to demonstrate finding people, I started with easier challenges. But in any event, I may or may not find new people to add to the FamilyTree. Since the families I choose are in an "end-of-line" sort of situation independent of the time frame, there is no guarantee that I will be any more successful than the average user of the Family Tree in finding additional family members. In any event, I hope that my efforts as recorded will help either the family members or others to find more information about their ancestral families and relatives.

Why am I doing this? For the past 15 years or so, I have been helping hundreds (thousands?) of people find their ancestors. I simply intend to document the process in detail with real examples so that you can see exactly how I find family lines. I simply want to show where those "green icons" come from. Since the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is entirely cooperative, I will simply assume that when I find a family that needs some research that I am helping that family. By the way, this is Project Five of the series because I intend to do this over and over with different examples.

There is another reason why I am doing this. Because I constantly offer to help people find their ancestors and I get relatively few that take advantage of that offer. I need to spend some of my excess energy.

A Family History Mission: Books and More Books

Check Register from Probate Record, Maryland State Archives

No. 55

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them or click back through all the posts.

Our calling as Senior Missionaries is as Record Preservation Specialists aka Camera Operators. We spend the majority of our time each weekday digitizing books in the Maryland State Archives. We digitize a lot of books. For example, this past week, my wife Ann and I digitized 23 books. That was 7431 images. The number of images we can do in a week of working at the camera depends on the condition of the books and whether or not there are any significant interruptions such as running out of books to digitize or having days off due to the Archives being closed or other reasons. This week was above the average number of images per day which runs around 1200 or so.

Much of the time we are working at the camera is spent setting up the camera and opening new files for the books on the computer, closing and saving files, and other overhead types of activities. This check register was part of a probate file submitted to the court as a record of the checks written by the court clerk in probate cases. It is a valuable record because it lists the names of the probate cases and gives a date when the checks were written. There is also a short description of the reason for the check. This was a very difficult book to digitize.

We take turns working at the camera and preparing the documents for digitization. We work about 40 hours a week, from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm, five days a week.

The books we are working on are Maryland Orphans Court Records. The Orphans Court in Maryland handles probate and guardianship matters. The main records are kept in "books" of bound blank paper. The older books have hand-lettered pages. Beginning in the 1800s, the records had preprinted numbered pages. The books are different sizes but the most common ones are about 26 inches by 12 or 14 inches and weigh about 10 to 15 pounds. In the late 1800s, some of the books had removable pages on metal post bindings. These books weigh over 20 pounds and are difficult to maneuver. But the ones with removable pages are very easy to digitize because we can do single sheets of paper.

The biggest challenge in digitizing the books is that they are three dimensional and the camera is trying to take a photo of a flat page. The books do not lay flat, so we spend a lot of time trying to get the books as flat as possible. We also need to mask off parts of the book so the camera can focus on the pages. You can see the masks in the photo above. The program used to digitize the books has been developed by FamilySearch and it ignores the "black" areas. So we can use black foam or cardboard to mask off areas we do not want the camera to see.

The work is work. We do get tired. But time passes quickly while we are busy working and every week seems to fly by. It helps to have a firm belief and understanding of the Plan of Salvation that helps us to understand that families are eternal. As we digitize the records, we often think about all the people that will be found because of our work and will be enabled to receive the ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I also spend time doing research on my own family and on the families of those around me who need help doing genealogical research. This makes my days full and meaningful. Every workday brings new books and new challenges. In just a few days, we will have been on our mission for five months.

Building a Family Tree: An Example on FamilySearch.org -- Project Eight

This post is another in the unending series of Projects I am doing to research different people in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. See the comment at the end of this post for a further explanation of the Projects.

I might mention that his series is really modeled after the endless case studies method that is the basis for teaching law in law schools around the United States. In law school, beginning on the first day and continuing for about three years of study, the law students read cases. I estimated that I had read tens of thousands of cases while I was studying in law school. The idea is that after you have read all these legal cases, you just might begin to understand how the court and law system works. Well, if you read my "case studies" or Projects you might just begin to understand how genealogical research works.

Here goes another project or case study or whatever.

This is how I am related to this person. He is my 5th Great-grandfather.

As you can see from his detailed information in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, his information has not been edited or standardized. This generally means that no one has done any significant work on this person or his family since the inception of the Family Tree program. Am I surprised to find direct line ancestors with little or no research done? Well, considering that I have, at least, sixty-four 5th generation grandparents, this is not particularly surprising.

Once again, I start by looking at sources and standardizing the entries. There are two attached entries, both birth records for a daughter named Rebecca Baily who is shown in the chart above as one of the links in my relationship to James Bailey. Hmm. The entries for James Baily show a christening on 29 September 1771 in Rotherhithe, Surrey, England. But there is not a source cited for this date or place. In addition, both of the attached source records for Rebecca Bailey indicate that she was christened in Ash by Wrotham, Kent, England on 2 February 1800. Additionally, Jame Bailey's wife, Rebecca Wallis is shown as follows:

The Latest Changes section indicates that the changes were made this year, 2018. It is quite unlikely that James Bailey of Surrey was married to Rebecca Wallis who was born and died in Kent. Before I do anything else,  I need to step back a bit and look at the sources for Rebecca Bailey. Here is her family.


There are fifteen sources attached to Rebecca Bailey or Baily.

In looking through all the sources, it looks like Rebecca Bailey is well documented for her christening in Kent and for her death and burial in London, England. It is also fairly clear that her parents' names are Rebecca Wallis and James Bailey. But at this point, I think the wrong James Bailey is listed in the Family Tree. So, is there a James Bailey married to a Rebecca Wallis?

Almost immediately, I find a duplicate James Bailey with more children from Cambridge, England. Let's see how many James Baileys there are. Searching on Findmypast.com, I find over 8,000 records for James Baileys in the time period when this one was supposed to be born.

363 of those James Baileys are found in Kent, England records. But I am looking for a James Bailey who was married to Rebecca Wallis in Kent. Does that record exist? We have to all remember that during the time period in question in England, people tended to be christened, married and die within about a six-mile radius. See "Large Online Family Trees Validated by Scientifically Conducted MyHeritage Study" Further, we don't just add the first James Bailey we find with a wife named Rebecca. Actually, it would be better to look for a "Rebecca Wallis." Here is what we already have in the Family Tree.

There are 40 sources for Rebecca Wallis and all of them show that she lived, married and died in Kent. She also had a second husband.

The real question then becomes more complicated. Was there a person named Rebecca Wallis who married another person named James Bailey in Kent that subsequently married a second time to Thomas Freeland? From this, you can see why I say I have at least 64 possible 5th generation grandparents to worry about.

Someone has added another source showing the marriage of a Rebecca Wallis to a James Bailey, but this time the marriage is in St Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, Southwark, England. Where is that place? Time to look up the places. You might remember by now that Rebecca Bailey, the daughter was born in Ash by Wrotham, Kent, England. Hmm. There are a lot of places in England named Ash, so we have to find Wrotham. Here is a map showing, Ash by Wrotham and it is in Kent, but it is about 25 miles from the church of St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, Southwark, which is part of London.

You have to use maps to see if what you are putting into the Family Tree makes sense. We still need to see if there is a James Bailey in this scenario. The birth record presently in the Family Tree for a Rebecca Bailey has her born in Southwark, St Mary, Newington, Where is that? Well, it turns out to be about 2 miles from St. Mary Magdalene Church. So, it looks like, at this point, that we have a family with a daughter named Rebecca Bailey who is my direct line ancestor with parents named James Bailey and Rebecca Wallis. But we may still have two different families. Rebecca Wallis may or may not be the same person who married Freeland. Right now, the geography doesn't fit.

Let's go back to Rebecca Bailey. She marries William Hindes Godfrey in Rainham, Kent, England in 1821. Not much question about that, the Godfrey line is pretty well established since my Great-grandmother's name was Margaret Godfrey Jarvis Overson. She has a christening record showing her christening in the Ash registry. By the way, this record shows that she was born posthumously to James and Rebecca Bailey. This means her father was already dead when she was born. But which Ash is this? Remember, there are a lot of places named Ash in England. There is another record that says that this Ash was in Wrotham. Rainham and Wrotham are about twenty miles apart, still a problem. By the way, the Godfrey family does end up in London.

Was the Rebecca born in Wrotham the same one married in Rainham? Is there another Ash? There is no Ash within ten miles of Rainham. You can use the 1851 map of England on FamilySearch.org to find out the names of all the places within a certain radius. See http://maps.familysearch.org/ What about Ash parish? Hmm again. There are two parishes in Kent with the name "Ash." In looking at the records for the parish register for Ash with the listing for Rebecca, I find that it is likely Ash near Dartford in Kent. None of these places are making any sense. Dartford is about forty miles from Rainham. Unfortunately, the 1841 England and Wales Census does not tell us where Rebecca Bailey Godfrey was born. Neither does her death record.

To summarize, at this point, we have more than one possible birth record for Rebecca Bailey showing she had parents named James and Rebecca. None of them seem to be very possible because they are geographically outside of the range of places she would have likely been born. William Hinds Godfrey was born in Sheerness, Kent, about 12 miles from Rainham.

Back to Findmypast.com. There are 72 Rebecca Baileys listed in Kent born within two years plus or minus of 1800. There are only six parish baptisms. The record showing James Bailey and Rebecca Wallis as parents is interesting. It shows that the parents were married in Bermondsey, London and that James Bailey is deceased. So we are back to Rebecca Wallis who was apparently christened in Ash by Wrotham, Kent. But there is another Rebecca Bailey christened in 1801 in Chatham, Kent which is right next to Rainham. Her mother's name is Mary Bailey but no husband is listed.

However, this Rebecca Elizabeth marries a John Plumstead in 1821. So, we are left with one choice. The one listed in the Family Tree born in Ash by Wortham. But we are not much closer to finding James Bailey. Well, it looks like we are trying to find a James Bailey who died in about 1800 but it is very unlikely that he is the one who was born in Surrey. We need to find a James Bailey in Kent who married Rebecca Wallis, but died before a baby was born in 1800.

Stay tuned.


Explanation of how this project began and why I am pursuing it.

In this project, I started out by picking a somewhat random person from my ancestors or my ancestors' descendants who lived in the 20th Century from the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and to hopefully show, step-by-step, the research needed to extend that person's family tree back several generations. In this particular case, I found a direct line ancestor to use as an example. Finding a person who has no apparent ancestors in the Family Tree is relatively easy for those who lived in or into the 20th Century by much harder the further you go back in the past.  To clarify this project, I will not be reserving any of the people I discover for my own Temple List, unless, as in the case with this family, I am directly related to those I find. I will simply leave the "green icons" on the Family Tree for that person's descendants to find and use for themselves. Please refrain from doing the temple work for people to whom you are not related.

Now, after I got going doing the research, I got a couple of requests to research some people further back in time. These turned out to be old, established "end-of-line" situations. Since my original idea was to demonstrate finding people, I started with easier challenges. But in any event,  I may or may not find new people to add to the FamilyTree. Since the families I choose are in an "end-of-line" sort of situation independent of the time frame, there is no guarantee that I will be any more successful than the average user of the Family Tree in finding additional family members. In any event, I hope that my efforts as recorded will help either the family members or others to find more information about their ancestral families and relatives.

Why am I doing this? For the past 15 years or so, I have been helping hundreds (thousands?) of people find their ancestors. I simply intend to document the process in detail with real examples so that you can see exactly how I find family lines. I simply want to show where those "green icons" come from. Since the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is entirely cooperative, I will simply assume that when I find a family that needs some research that I am helping that family. By the way, this is Project Five of the series because I intend to do this over and over with different examples.

There is another reason why I am doing this. Because I constantly offer to help people find their ancestors and I get relatively few that take advantage of that offer. I need to spend some of my excess energy.

A Family History Mission: A Visit to the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

No. 54

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them or click back through all the posts.

We finally made a trip to the Library of Congress. If you know much about our family, you know that books are an important part of our family's culture. Also, we a known for taking out-of-town visitors on tours of our local libraries. We also tend to visit libraries across the country. We rode the Metro downtown and walked a block or so to the Library.

It was a lovely warm day in April, which is quite a treat after an endless winter. We planned to take a guided tour of the Library but got there just as the tours left so we decided to wander around a bit.

I thought we might as well get started looking at the books, so we found the Registration Room to apply for "Readers Cards." The application process turned out to be efficient and quite simple and we very shortly had our cards in hand.

As Senior Missionaries, we are encouraged to take advantage of cultural and educational opportunities in our mission area. We don't have an official "Preparation Day," but we now work all day Monday through Friday. That means that anything that takes time is done on Saturday.

Back to the Library of Congress. We went right across the hallway from the Registration Room to the Big Reading Room of the Library.

We met two very nice staff workers who spent a considerable amount of time explaining the use of the Library and showing us where to look for genealogy books. The Library of Congress used to have a Local History and Genealogy Reading room but that has been abandoned and the reference books that were in that room are now in the general reference stacks.

This area is not quite as impressive as the rest of the Library. We got unlimited access to the reference books in this area.

Although there is an extensive online catalog, the Library still has its 3 x5 card catalogs available for searching.

I am afraid that my fingers don't work as well as they did when I was searching the card catalog in the University of Utah Library so many years ago. But I did find the Rhode Island books and, out of habit, we both started doing research.

My wife Ann ordered a book, but it was not available. We spent a couple of hours before we came to our senses and decided to see the rest of the Library. Here is what the Reading Room looks like from the ground floor.

We then walked across the street to the Capitol and went on a tour.  We also got to see the National Botanical Garden for about half an hour before we got on the train to go back to Annapolis.

I will probably write about the Library of Congress again sometime. 

Building a Family Tree: An Example on FamilySearch.org -- Project Seven

This post is another in the unending series of Projects I am doing to research different people in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. See the comment at the end of this post for a further explanation of the Projects.

This is how I am related to this person.

It is relatively easy to find these opportunities in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. I can often see the opportunity when I notice that none of the date or place entries have been standardized. This indicates that no consistent work has yet been done on this person and by implication her family line. As a cautionary note, I am using this person as an example of research methodology. Although her husband is my cousin and her children would be my cousins, technically, she is not my cousin and I am not related to her parents or ancestors. Hmm. However, this brings up an interesting issue. Assuming that during this time period, people married their cousins, I am very likely related to her and her family if I do enough research.

The first step is to standardize all the data.  Don't forget to standardize the marriage information is there is any. The next step is to add any Record Hints that might be available.

Once this is done, we need to look at the information we have available and examine all the sources to make sure the information is reflected in the main entries. We already have a conflict in that the birth name is variously recorded as "Naomi" or "Laomi." I am guessing that the name is Naomi, and a quick check by a Google search for "Laomi" indicates that the word probably does not exist and is an error but it is possible that the name was unique.

After standardizing the dates and places, I begin with a search on FamilySearch.org by clicking on the link in the "Search Records" sidebar. The record already shows the name of her mother and husband, but no children.

Are there any additional records beyond the sources already listed?

She should show up in subsequent England and Wales Census records and possibly elsewhere. There may also be a death record. The listed birth records only show a mother's name. This may reflect that she was born out-of-wedlock or simply that the father was not recorded. After searching on FamilySearch, I note that I should pay attention to the county because there are a number of women with the same given name and similar surnames around England. I also add in the husband's name and change her surname to Harrington. When I do this, I find the 1881 Census.

Still no children, I search for her husband and I remember to add in her name as a spouse and come up with a marriage record. The rest of the search is inconclusive. Now, I turn to Ancestry.com.  I immediately find a more complete marriage record this time giving her father's name.

However, in the course of working on this family, I began to verify the connections through the Harrington line. Oops. That's where I should have started. My ancestor Sarah Harrington is definitely the wife of Joseph De Friez. But from there the line needs to be verified. Like so many of the entries in the Family Tree going back this far in time, there are some serious problems. I guess this is where this example ends for the time being.

An added note: With help from my daughter Melinda, we are verifying the Sarah Harrington family line. It looks like what was in the Family Tree was generally correct but needed some additional sources. Make sure you are related to those in the Family Tree.

Explanation of how this project began and why I am pursuing it.

In this project, I started out by picking a somewhat random person from my ancestors' descendants who lived in the 20th Century from the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and to hopefully show, step-by-step, the research needed to extend that person's family tree back several generations. Finding a person who has no apparent ancestors in the Family Tree is relatively easy for those who lived in or into the 20th Century. However, I am not able to use any of my own family lines because my direct lines all extend at least six generations. To clarify this project, I will not be reserving any of the people I discover for my own Temple List. I will simply leave the "green icons" on the Family Tree for that person's descendants to find and use for themselves. Please refrain from doing the temple work for people to whom you are not related.

Now, after I got going doing the research, I got a couple of requests to research some people further back in time. These turned out to be old, established "end-of-line" situations. Since my original idea was to demonstrate finding people, I started with easier challenges. But in any event,  I may or may not find new people to add to the FamilyTree. Since the families I choose are in an "end-of-line" sort of situation independent of the time frame, there is no guarantee that I will be any more successful than the average user of the Family Tree in finding additional family members. In any event, I hope that my efforts as recorded will help either the family members or others to find more information about their ancestral families and relatives.

Why am I doing this? For the past 15 years or so, I have been helping hundreds (thousands?) of people find their ancestors. I simply intend to document the process in detail with real examples so that you can see exactly how I find family lines. I simply want to show where those "green icons" come from. Since the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is entirely cooperative, I will simply assume that when I find a family that needs some research that I am helping that family. By the way, this is Project Five of the series because I intend to do this over and over with different examples.

There is another reason why I am doing this. Because I constantly offer to help people find their ancestors and I get relatively few that take advantage of that offer. I need to spend some of my excess energy.

A Family History Mission: Working At the Archives

Archival storage shelves in the Maryland State Archives

No. 53

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them or click back through all the posts.

One thing that does become clear after almost five months of serving as a Record Preservation Specialist for FamilySearch as a Senior Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that it is hard work. I am realizing that I was getting tired after 8 hours or so of work at the Maryland State Archives digitizing and preparing documents. Many days, I find I have to crash and take a half hour nap when we get back to our apartment so I can keep going into the evening.

I have been visiting the local Annapolis Family History Center as much as possible, usually on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. They are open during the day, but of course, we are working at the Archives. As has been my experience with many Family History Centers, it takes a significant effort on the part of the volunteer staff and their supporting Stake organizations to publicize the Family History Center so members and others will come and use the facility. What I have noticed, however, that absent classes and other outreach programs, the Family History Centers are little used. This is most likely due to the fact that much of the information needed for research is available online.

Now that we have been serving for a while, we are pretty much down to a routine. What does happen from time to time to make life interesting is the challenge of digitizing a book that is falling apart from age and use. Here is a recent example:

Here is a closer look at the issues involved in digitizing this record.

At some time in the past, attempts were made to "fix" the problem by using sticky tape and that has now dried and become discolored. The pages of this book were so brittle that they were falling apart. We carefully digitized each page. The benefit of digitization is that the inevitable loss of this book's contents has now been delayed indefinitely. This example does NOT show any lack of care on the part of the Archives, it is a natural process that was made worse by the use of the book from the time it was created. This damage shows that the book was heavily used until it literally fell apart.

This book took almost an entire day to digitize.

As we work in the Archives, our appreciation for the importance of helping to preserve these priceless genealogically important documents increases every day. 

New Senior Missionary Opportunities Website

https://seniormissionary.lds.org/srsite/

The new Senior Missionary Opportunities website has a huge list of opportunities for seniors to serve missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The variety of experiences and opportunities seems almost limitless. After answering a few simple questions, you can see a customized list of opportunities serving your interests. Here is part of the list for Full-Time missionaries who would like to serve in the area of Family History.

If you would like to serve or are only dreaming about the possibility, you will enjoy see the long list of places and ways that you can serve.

Here is the URL

https://seniormissionary.lds.org/srsite/ 

Building a Family Tree: An Example on FamilySearch.org -- Project Six, Part Two

This post is another in the unending series of Projects I am doing to research different people in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. See the comment at the end of this post for a further explanation of the Projects. 

In my earlier post about Thomas Gray, I ended by leaving many unsolved questions about the family. But thanks to a surprise helper in England, I received a message through the FamilySearch.org website about some wonderful progress he had made. Here is his message:

Hello again. It's been a while since we communicated. 

I thought you might like to know I've had a look through KNCB-72K Beatrice Clarke and made a bit of progress on sourcing etc. Got her birth and marriage registry index entries, but most importantly I've found her and her husband in the 1911 census. He and one child were at his parents' house in Rettendon in Essex, in between Southend and Chelmsford. She and the other four children were at her mother's house in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. The reason you weren't easily able to find her was that she was 10 years too old in that census: she was down as having been born in 1873. 

All of the children's birth entries show Clarke as the maiden name in the GRO indices, and I've filled in the appropriate middle names. I've not dealt with the rather ludicrous death dates for the twins of "2010", but I think I might have a proper death date for the male twin, just no proper sources to prove it. There's a Findagrave entry which has him born 17th April 1907 and dying in 1986 in Queensland in Australia. I've also found Australian electoral register entries corresponding to a couple of his siblings as well on Ancestry. It appears that some of the children at least ended up in Australia by about 1930 as an entry for Kathleen Prudence Margaret Harmer has her in New South Wales by 1934 and an entry for Robert Alfred Sutton Harmer has him in New South Wales by 1930. There also appears to be an Australian military service record Robert Alfred Sutton Harmer with him having a birth date of 7th March 1909, a birth place of Essex, England and next of kin of Alma Harmer. 

So I'd suggest Australia might be a fertile hunting ground for the mysterious second husband Mr Gray. 

BTW since my last message I've found the Gray-Harmer marriage you were looking for. 1930, Inverell, New South Wales.

You may have heard me mention the amazing experience I had with this commentator the first time I heard from him. I had discovered a family that needed some work on the Family Tree and left off working on the family until the next day only to discover that this person in England had filled in all the blanks and provided sources for the entire family. Now, it happens again.

It is so amazing to encounter such a superb example of genealogical research and see how it can be done in a such a short time using online tools. All I can say is thank you for the help and the example of outstanding research. Now I need to get busy and do a Part Three to this Project and see what more I can find.

Explanation of how this project began and why I am pursuing it.

In this project, I started out by picking a somewhat random person from my ancestors' descendants who lived in the 20th Century from the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and to hopefully show, step-by-step, the research needed to extend that person's family tree back several generations. Finding a person who has no apparent ancestors in the Family Tree is relatively easy for those who lived in or into the 20th Century. However, I am not able to use any of my own family lines because my direct lines all end back, at least, six generations. To clarify this project, I will not be reserving any of the people I discover for my own Temple List. I will simply leave the "green icons" on the Family Tree for that person's descendants to find and use for themselves. Please refrain from doing the temple work for people to whom you are not related.

Now, after I got going doing the research, I got a couple of requests to research some people further back in time. These turned out to be old, established "end-of-line" situations. Since my original idea was to demonstrate finding people, I started with easier challenges. But in any event,  I may or may not find new people to add to the FamilyTree. Since the families I choose are in an "end-of-line" sort of situation independent of the time frame, there is no guarantee that I will be any more successful than the average user of the Family Tree in finding additional family members. In any event, I hope that my efforts as recorded will help either the family members or others to find more information about their ancestral families and relatives.

Why am I doing this? For the past 15 years or so, I have been helping hundreds (thousands?) of people find their ancestors. I simply intend to document the process in detail with real examples so that you can see exactly how I find family lines. I simply want to show where those "green icons" come from. Since the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is entirely cooperative, I will simply assume that when I find a family that needs some research that I am helping that family. By the way, this is Project Five of the series because I intend to do this over and over with different examples.

There is another reason why I am doing this. Because I constantly offer to help people find their ancestors and I get relatively few that take advantage of that offer. I need to spend some of my excess energy.

Interesting Observations on the Historical Record Collections

I get a weekly notice from FamilySearch.org about all of the new or updated Historical Records added by FamilySearch. You might recall that the "Historical Record Collections" are linked from the main "Search" tab on the web pages of the website.

Now, what is interesting is that for the past few weeks all the records being uploaded to the Historical Record Collections are indexes without additional images. At the same time, the number of digital images published only in the FamilySearch Catalog has grown to 746.3 million. I am informed that the total number of images online on FamilySearch.org will soon reach or has reached by the date of this post, 2 billion images. So almost half of those images are available only by searching in the Catalog.

I am supposing that FamilySearch is trying to make the images already in the Historical Record Collections searchable, hence, the addition of indexes to these images. But if you are doing research, you need to realize that if you don't look for records in the Catalog, you will be missing a significant percentage of the total records on the website. This means that searching for records by using a name search is not entirely effective.

A Family History Mission: Dorsey Graveyard at Home Depot

No. 53

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them or click back through all the posts.

Most towns in the West have one or maybe two large cemeteries. Smaller cemeteries are not unheard of but they are not usually located in a Home Depot parking lot. I had to drive over to this Home Depot and take a look for myself. Here is the photo of the "graveyard."

We drive by two larger cemeteries on our way to work at the Maryland State Archives every day, five days a week. Almost everywhere we go around Annapolis we find another graveyard. I guess we are in the right place to digitize probate records for family history.

Building a Family Tree: An Example on FamilySearch.org -- Project Six

This post is another in the unending series of Projects I am doing to research different people in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. See the comment at the end of this post for a further explanation of the Projects. 

This person is supposed to be the husband of one of my cousins. The only source for this person listed in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a "Legacy" source that cites "published information." In starting out with this type of entry, you cannot rely on even the name being accurate. Here is what is shown for the family information.

Since the name "Thomas Gray" is fairly common, I decided to begin with his wife. Here is how I am related to her.

She has five sources listed including two England and Wales Census years. But she is shown as being 18 years old living with her parents in the 1901 England and Wales Census. It also appears that the records were attached by my daughter Melinda Tanner Bowers and so I am confident that the research has been well done.

Here, once again, we get into the issue of privacy laws. As I have noted before, the England and Wales Census records for 1921 will not be released until 2022. So we have four more years to wait. But by looking at the information for Beatrice Anne Clarke, I see that she was apparently married twice. Her first husband died in 1919.

Is there any hope? What is more pertinent is whether or not there is any reason for me to do the research for this person at this time? Since this is Beatrice Annie Clarke's second marriage and her first husband died in 1919, there is really nothing here to indicate when this second marriage took place. In fact, she could have married the second time almost anytime up until she died, but even those dates are missing. However, Beatrice and her two children were all born in Essex. So let's take a look and see what the chances are for finding a Thomas Gray in Essex. I will look in Findmypast.com. There are well over a million records for the Gray surname in the Findmypast.com database, 1,338,744 to be exact and 55,263 of those live in Essex. By refining the search to add a given name and an approximate birthdate, I get the following:

Hmm. Not much of a chance to find this person. I looked through every one of the marriages listed in the time period they could have been performed and did not find a marriage record. I started over and searched for Beatrice rather than Thomas Gray. I did find a marriage record for Beatrice and her first husband, Samuel Robert Harmer. I changed the marriage date to reflect the record.

I searched every listing of marriages for Beatrice during the possible time periods and did not find a marriage record to Thomas Gray. I did find one unusual record on MyHeritage.com.

This record shows an Annie Harmer (Clarke) working as a domestic servant in Windemere Crescent, Eastbourne, Sussex, England. It has the note that she is married and 45 years old. The birthdate does not agree with what is in the sources on the Family Tree.

Where do I go with this? Well, this research goes into the Family Tree and awaits the passage of time to provide additional information.

Explanation of how this project began and why I am pursuing it.

In this project, I started out by picking a somewhat random person from my ancestors' descendants who lived in the 20th Century from the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and to hopefully show, step-by-step, the research needed to extend that person's family tree back several generations. Finding a person who has no apparent ancestors in the Family Tree is relatively easy for those who lived in or into the 20th Century. However, I am not able to use any of my own family lines because my direct lines all end back, at least, six generations. To clarify this project, I will not be reserving any of the people I discover for my own Temple List. I will simply leave the "green icons" on the Family Tree for that person's descendants to find and use for themselves. Please refrain from doing the temple work for people to whom you are not related.

Now, after I got going doing the research, I got a couple of requests to research some people further back in time. These turned out to be old, established "end-of-line" situations. Since my original idea was to demonstrate finding people, I started with easier challenges. But in any event,  I may or may not find new people to add to the FamilyTree. Since the families I choose are in an "end-of-line" sort of situation independent of the time frame, there is no guarantee that I will be any more successful than the average user of the Family Tree in finding additional family members. In any event, I hope that my efforts as recorded will help either the family members or others to find more information about their ancestral families and relatives.

Why am I doing this? For the past 15 years or so, I have been helping hundreds (thousands?) of people find their ancestors. I simply intend to document the process in detail with real examples so that you can see exactly how I find family lines. I simply want to show where those "green icons" come from. Since the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is entirely cooperative, I will simply assume that when I find a family that needs some research that I am helping that family. By the way, this is Project Five of the series because I intend to do this over and over with different examples.

There is another reason why I am doing this. Because I constantly offer to help people find their ancestors and I get relatively few that take advantage of that offer. I need to spend some of my excess energy.

A Family History Mission: More Unusual Archival Finds

No. 52

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them or click back through all the posts.

We are finding some very usual items here at the Maryland State Archives. I recently posted a document signed by George Washington, but some of the other items are just plain strange. The court documents we are digitizing are in large books, some weighing as much as 25 pounds or more.

These books are most transcripts of filed court probate documents. There is one Court Clerk who liked to "illustrate" his transcripts with drawings of the court seals on the original documents. Seals were required for some types of court filings. Here are some examples of his work.

Usually, the clerks would just do a squiggle with the word "Seal" but this clerk went all out.

Here's what they look like on the pages of the books.

So far, we have found two books with these drawings.

We also keep finding interesting people in the records. Here is another example.

This is a probate document for Junius B. Booth, b. 1796, d. 1852. This is the entry in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree for the family showing that he is the father of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.

It helps to know a lot about the history of the United States and Maryland, in particular, to work with these old documents.