Month: March 2018

Berry Berry Green Green

He certainly is the berries. This is the apparent enumeration for Greenberry Green in Josh Bell County, Kentucky. He is indexed on  Ancestry.com as Berry Green Green. It looks like everyone in the household appears with the “double surname” as well. Those who think that “Josh Bell” is incorrect as the county name would be wrong. Bell […]

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Every Little Detail

reprinted from the Ancestry Daily News    Michael John Neill – 6/15/2005 Every Little Detail They say “the devil is in the details.”While I’m never certain who this mysterious “they” is, one thing is for certain: The details can create headaches or opportunities, depending upon whether they are noticed and how they are interpreted. Those Short Phrases […]

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AAA Committee in 1941

All of us have questions we’d like to ask those relatives whose lifespans overlapped with ours. Now I have one more. My great-granddad, Fred Ufkes, and his brother were elected in 1941 as AAA committeemen in Hancock County, Illinois, from Bear Creek Township. A little bit of online reading provided some historical background and a […]

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Signatures on Releases of Mortgages

This is the 1879 signature of Conrad Haase, my step-3rd-great-grandfather. It was contained on a mortgage made out by his step-daughter and son-in-law, Frances and John Michael Trautvetter. Their mortgage was dated 1 Feb 1870 and was paid off in 1879. Frances would have been nineteen when she signed the mortgage, John would have been […]

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Two Declarations of Intention

When I was in Salt Lake last May, one of my goals was to search for some declarations of intent and other naturalization documents on a few of my ancestors. Like other documents, declarations of intent to become a citizen can vary greatly from one location to another and from one time period to another. Those […]

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Where Did They Get That?

note–this originally ran in 2004–making the 1900 census reference a little dated.  Confusion is often in the mind of the beholder. The ongoing release of the every name 1900 census index at Ancestry.com has caused me to revisit some relatives in this census. When I viewed one entry, I remembered how confused I was when I first […]

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Ancestry.com’s Inferred Household and Children in 1870

Pre-1880 US census records can allow genealogists to gather clues about family relationships. But at their very essence they confirm that individuals are living in the same household at the point in time when the census enumeration was made. Ancestry.com’s 1870 census database now infers family relationships from the census enumeration. These two screen shots […]

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Creating Your Own Map

I’m not a big fan of “genealogical activities” that fall into my definition of cutesy or time-wasting. I realize others may have different points of view and that’s their opinion. Activities that have a purpose or cause me to analyze my materials in more details are always good. Creating maps, charts, and other visuals can […]

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