Scavenger Hunt

Do you ever find in your own research that leads you on a scavenger hunt? That's how I felt this morning when I was trying to figure out some of my 'bad' citations attached to James Crawford on my Ancestry tree.

Fortunately, when I clicked on the top Entry citation, it opened up a window that provided enough information about this erroneous citation to help me locate my original research.

Scroll, Click, Connect

Do you ever look at other trees on Ancestry? I know I do. I use them for hints. I also attach them as 'sources' so that I can get back to trees that match my ancestors.

However, I try not to add 'new people' from those trees to my tree. I also try to add additional sources to support the information in my tree. Some of those sources are obtained thru Ancestry and the hinting system.

However, some of my sources come from outside of Ancestry. Thus, when you search Ancestry's Public Member Trees for someone in my tree, the number of sources attached to the individual will be shown.

Bad citations

Do you have older source citations in your tree that your high school English teacher would yell at you about? Do you have source citations in your tree that even you can't use to locate the information?

I don't know about you, but I have such sources in my tree. As I'm reviewing my Crawford research, I'm finding those source citations.

Most of these HORRIBLE citations came from my early days of research when citation standards were just being developed.

1815 Guthrie Patent

189 141

Examined & Sent May 22d 1815

James Madison, President of the United States of America
To all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting:

Know Ye, that William B Guthrie of Clark County Ind. Territory

Eliza Part 2

As discussed in my recent post, Duplicate or Different, I followed up on a 'notice of change' message to discover two Eliza Van Valkenbergs on Family Search. By looking at the differences between the two women, I discovered some clues that led to more information in Eliza.

One of those clues was the differing death dates for Eliza. In one case, the death date was given as between 1920 and 1930. I'm sure this was due to not finding Eliza in records.

The other Eliza had a death date of 1943 listed. Knowing that Eliza had been married several times, I suspected that a different surname was contributing to the difficulty in finding records. When I searched Newspapers.com for the term Eliza in 1943 in St. Joseph, Missouri, I found a notice of her death.

Duplicate or Different?

Do you ever check out someone else's tree to see if they have something that disagrees with what you have? I know I'm usually looking for confirmation, but I appreciate seeing conflicting information. That conflicting information makes me re-look at what I have and to look harder for additional sources to support what I have.

That's likely one of the reasons I work with the tree on FamilySearch. On this tree, I can look at the changes made to an individual. If those changes differ from information I have compiled, I can message the user making the changes and/or post a discussion about the change.

Thus, I utilize the 'watch' button to mark individuals I'm researching. Not only have I marked my ancestors to 'watch' but I've also marked other individuals in my research that I'm having trouble finding sources. Each week, I get notified of changes to those 'watched' individuals.

This morning's notification list included Eliza Honor Van Valkenburg, the second wife of my ancestor, Albert J Hutchinson. That's when I discovered that there are TWO of them in the Family Search tree.

Since I haven't found birth or death information for her, I have no idea which  Honor Van Valkenburg is the correct one. However, I do believe that these are the same women and that they are the same person I have in my database as Eliza Honor Van Valkenberg.