Re-Searching

Do you ever go back thru your research trying to use your older research to try and find new information? If so, that is what I'm working on with my James Crawford brick wall. As part of that process, I'm reviewing the other Crawford families I've identified and trying to prove/disprove a relationship with my ancestor, James Crawford.

Thus, I was looking at the James Crawford who was a Presbyterian minister at Walnut Hill Church outside of Lexington, Kentucky. Not only am I trying to find additional information, but I'm also trying to make sure I have good source citations for the information I have already located.

For Rev. James Crawford's death date, I had cited Kentucky Obituaries 1787-1854

Since my citation had included my filing code, Crawford.KY.001, I could locate my notes.

These notes are typical of my early days of genealogy research. They are handwritten and usually contain the title of the source and repository where I found it. My early research rarely contained a full citation.

Curious as to how accurately I recorded the information, I decided to see if I could find this information on Ancestry. From various Barefoot Genealogist's Ancestry videos, I knew that I should search Ancestry's collections and not rely on the hinting system. 

Thus, I repeated my search for a James Crawford who died in 1803 in Kentucky.

The results from this search had only one suggested source for the death: Find a Grave Index.

Even though I didn't come up with the Kentucky Obituaries source, I elected to continue looking. I then did a search of the catalog for Kentucky Obituaries.

This search provided me a link to the Ancestry database, Kentucky Obituaries, 1787-1854. The Source Description did not indicate that the database was pulled from the book I used years ago. Hoping that the database contained similar information as found in the book, I did a search for James Crawford who died in 1803. 

Unfortunately, that search produced NO results.

When I edited the search to be less 'Exact', I got a page of results, including the reference to Rev. James Crawford that I was hoping to find.

Clicking on the image in the results list took me to a digital image from what appears to be a page from the book. 

Thus, I was able to verify that my handwritten notes were correct. This source is an 'index' and not the original newspaper entry. However, it does provide additional information that I did not have in my handwritten notes: "KG 4/19". Since the images were browsable, I was able to go to the first image, where I discovered that the database is pulling from the book I used for my notes.

Browsing images at the first of the book, I was able to locate information indicating that KG stands for Kentucky Gazette.

The next challenge was to try and locate an actual image from the April 19, 1803 issue of the Kentucky Gazette. My first attempt to locate the newspaper was in Newspapers.com.

I also tried searching Genealogy Bank and Chronicling America. None of my searches proved successful. I then tried to use Ancestor Hunt's list of Kentucky newspapers to see if I could get to a digital image. Again, I was unsuccessful. 

I then tried a simple Google search for 'Kentucky Gazette April 19 1803'. 

Clicking on the first link took me to a 'transcription' of the paper. When I clicked on the 'item link' I got to a digital image of the paper.

Thus, my re-searching for the Kentucky Obituaries source in my handwritten notes led me to a digital copy of the obituary. 

In the process, I learned

• Ancestry contains a digital image of the Kentucky Obituaries, 1787-1854 book (and several other books containing Kentucky records)
• the Kentucky Obituaries, 1787-1854 database is NOT included in the list of search results from a search of All Collections.

Based on my experience, I believe that I Ancestry has a lot of resources that I haven't used . Thus, I need to go beyond searching for the individual in all collections to searching the 'Card Catalog' to see what resources are available for a locality and then searching those resources.