Narrative Reports

Do you ever take the 'easy way' to do something? Well, I do all of the time when it comes to writing about an ancestor. For quite a few years, I've been letting my genealogy software compose the narrative.

I first learned to take advantage of turning the events into sentences and thus into a narrative while using The Master Genealogist. Second Site software would take my genealogy data in TMG and turn it into a narrated web site.

Tax Roles

I've been trying to learn more about my ancestor, John Thompson (1797-1857) in hopes of identifying his parents. He married Sarah Iglehart in 1820 in Ohio County, Kentucky. Thus, I wanted to learn more about any Thompsons in Ohio County, Kentucky around the time of this marriage.

Fortunately, the Ohio County, Kentucky Tax Books, 1799-1875 are available for viewing on Family Search. Even though these images aren't indexed, it was fairly easy to find the images for the 'T' portion of the alphabet. (Note: I also recorded information for the Igleharts while viewing this resource.)

I found a John Thompson listed in 1820. This John Thompson was over 21 and owned a horse.

Charles Oliver Mentzer

     Charles Oliver Mentzer was born on 1 Jul 1869 in Kewanee, Henry, Illinois, United States.^{1–12 1,10,13–14} He lived in Kewanee, Henry, Illinois, United States on 23 Aug 1870.¹⁵ Chas O Mentzer was listed in the household of Geo Mentzer on the 1870 census. According to the census, Chas was 1 year old and born in Illinois. He lived in Woodson, Kansas, United States in 1871.²

Range 14 East 6th PM Index

Have you ever had trouble documenting a father/son relationship? Or, have you had trouble separating records for men of the same name? My go to source in these situations has been the land records.

In Kansas, we are lucky in that most counties maintain what is called the Range Index. Basically, this is an index of the land transactions for the range. What is nice about this index is that each quarter section has its own page. Thus, it is easy to see how land was transferred over time.

Last August, I was able to travel to Woodson County, Kansas to track down a court case and to obtain copies of the land records for my Mentzer, Wells, and Ricketts families. Below is a transcription of the information found in the index for Range 14.

Woodson County, Kansas
Range 14 Index

Never Finished Pt 2

A comment was made on me previous post about sourcing. I totally agree that if I only count well-documented ancestors, then my % decreases drastically. I recently discovered the ability of the Fan Chart on the Family Search tree to display status of sourcing.

Never Finished

Last May, we started a home improvement project to replace broken and damaged concrete. Since the concrete was under our screened-in-porch, the project included tearing down our the screened-in-porch and replacing it with a room addition. The project quickly expanded to include new siding and windows. In July, I jokingly commented to our contractor that I just wanted to be done by Christmas.

Well, the tree is up, and we aren't finished yet. Unfortunately, they ran out of siding. We are on the list for new guttering, but the weather is affecting that contractor's ability to work. Thus, our remodel project is still a work in progress -- a lot like my genealogy projects.

Today, someone tweeted Crista Cowan's 2012 blog post, Family History All Done? What's Your Number? Curious, I decided to 'calculate' my number.

Now, when people question why I'm not finished, I can honestly say:

I've only discovered 39% of my ancestors back 10 generations!

What's Your Number?